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PROTESTANT MISSIONS 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 12mo, . . . $1.75 
FOREIGN MISSIONS. Their Place in the Pas- 
torate, in Prayer, in Conferences. 12mo, 1.75 
MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 12mo, 2.00 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 



THEIR RISE AND EARLY PROGRESS 



LECTURES 



BY 

/ 

A. C. THOMPSON, 

AUTHOR OF "MORAVIAN MISSIONS," ETC., ETC. 



L+(fC&£~^^ 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1894 



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Copyright by 
A. C. THOMPSON. 

1894. 



THE CAXTON PRESS 
NEW YORK 



PREFACE 



The lectureship on Foreign Missions in a theological 
seminary should first occupy itself with such Scriptural facts 
and principles as pertain fundamentally to this department. 
Reverent, patient, and scholarly attention should be given to 
the nature and scope of Christ's kingdom ; its divinely ap- 
pointed agencies; the obligations, motives, and methods in- 
cumbent; the obstacles to be overcome; the predicted earthly 
period ; its varied fortunes and final triumph. There is emi- 
nent need that sound exegesis be applied to the prophecies, 
parables, and symbols in both Testaments which relate to 
the kingdom and to the Church of our Lord. An extended 
series — indeed, successive series — of lectures may well be 
devoted to this broad field. A partial attempt in that line 
was made at the Hartford Theological Seminary a few years 
since; but the lectures now published, which were delivered 
at that institution, are of a different type and form an intro- 
duction to the history of more modern Protestant missions. 

Boston, 1894. 



CONTENTS. 



Lecture I. Period of the Reformation. Pages 3-21. 

Limited Views — Sixteenth Century — Unfavorable Conditions, 
Political and Financial — No Aggressive Sentiment — Mis- 
taken Eschatology — First Movements — Colony in Brazil 

— Work in Lapland — New Sweden — Movements Spas- 
modic and Individual — Peter Heyling — Von Welz. 

Lecture II. Early Dutch Missions. Pages 22-38. 

The Netherlands — Opportunity for Missions — Evangelism in 
Mind — Missionary College — Various Localities — Eastern 
Archipelago — India — Surinam — Defects of Those Mis- 
sions — Limited Term of Service — Vernaculars Not Mas- 
tered — Superficial Instruction — Secular Inducements — 
Present Dutch East Indies — Dutch Missionary Societies — 
Other Missionary Societies — Growth of Mohammedanism. 

Lecture III. Early English Movements. Pages 39-58. 

Preliminary — The Reformation in England — Individual Move- 
ments — Alleine, Oxenbridge, Lake, Hyde, Cromwell, Boyle 

— New England Colonies Missionary — Secular Elements 

— Divine Design — Colonial Evangelism — Pilgrim and 
Puritan — The Indians — The Apostle Eliot — In England 

— Pastorate at Roxbury — The Language — His Incentives. 

Lecture IV. Eliot, the Apostle of the Indians. 
Pages 59-81. 

His Methods — Initial Proceedings — Civilization Developing — 
Literary Labors, Works Original and Translated — Trans- 
lation of the Bible — Comparative Embarrassments — A 



VI CONTENTS. 

Peerless Achievement — His Successes — Undoubted Con- 
versions — Church Organization Delayed — Fruits of Labor 
— Trials and Disappointments, Personal, Relating to In- 
dians, Hostilities, Decadence — Resume — Results Per- 
petuated. 

Lecture V. Colonial Endeavors. Pages 82-116. 

In Massachusetts, Southeastern Section — Martha's Vineyard 
and Nantucket — The Mayhews — Co-laborers and Succes- 
sors — Results — Barnstable County — Plymouth — Massa- 
chusetts Colony — Berkshire County, John Sergeant — 
Jonathan Edwards — Other Laborers — General Consider- 
ations — In Rhode Island — Roger Williams — Church at 
"Westerly — In Connecticut, Early Attempts — Eleazer 
Wheelock — Samson Occom — In New York and Other 
Colonies — Conclusion. 

Lecture VI. David Brainerd. Pages 117-147. 

Brainerd's Influence — Religious Experience — Spiritual Strug- 
gles — Christian Outset — College Career — Religious Ex- 
ercises — Eorgiving Spirit — Sense of Sin — Aspirations 
after Holiness — Supreme Motive — Temperament — No 
Exaggeration — Missionary Life — Preliminary — At Kaun- 
aumeek — No Wavering — Among Delawares, At Forks 
of the Delaware — On the Susquehannah — At Crossweek- 
sung — Impediments, In Traveling — 111 Health — Indian 
Character — Unfriendly Whites — The Language — Devot- 
edness — Success — Revival Experiences — The Work Genu- 
ine — Numerical Results — Attestations — Methods — Evan- 
gelical Truth — Prevailing Prayer — Last Days. 

Lecture VII. Danish Tranquebar Mission. 
Pages 148-174. 

Denmark and the Anglo-Saxons — Frederick IV — Origin of 
the Movement — First Missionaries — The Period — The 
Field — Early Experiences — Initial Labors — Disappoint- 
ments — Maltreatment — Reinforcements — Ziegenbalg's Ar- 
dor — Visits Europe — Literary Labors — Early Death. 



CONTENTS. Vll 

Lecture VIII. Tranquebar Mission — Continued. 
Pages 175-202. 

Germany, 1750 — C. F. Schwartz — Outset — The Mission- 
Schwartz as Missionary — Trichinopoly Rock — Schwartz 
as Diplomatist — Caste — Schwartz's Celibacy — Devoted- 
ness — Unworldly — Longevity — Last Days. 

Lecture IX. Tranquebar Mission — Concluded. 
Pages 203-232. 

Relations Vague — Decline — Decay Lamentable — Superfici- 
ality — Caste — Native Pastorate — Education — Subordi- 
nate Pursuits — Political Disorder — Persecution — Diver- 
sities — State Relations — Nominal Christians — Direct 
Results — Reflex Results — Resident Europeans. 

Lecture X. Danish Greenland Mission. Pages 233-260. 

Arctic Regions — Hans Egede — Providential Leadings — Per- 
sistence — Encouragement Tardy — Greenland — Discour- 
agements — Perseverance — Results — Mistaken Theory — 
Egede Returns — Heroism — Arctic Disasters — Genuine 
Nobility — Usefulness. 

Lecture XI. Early Moravian Missions. Pages 261-289. 

John Huss — Discipline — Moravian Antecedence — Zinzendorf 
— The Epoch — Motive Power — Christian Loyalty — 
Small, Great — Herrnhut, 1732 — Coincidences — First Mis- 
sionaries — No Romanticism — Fidelity — August 21 — ; 
Fields and Forces — Burial Places — The Lesson. 

Appendix. Pages 291-310. 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 

THEIR RISE AND EARLY PROGRESS 



SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 



LECTUEE I. — PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 

On a Chinese map of the world, two feet by 
three and a half, the Celestial Empire occupies 
nearly the whole surface. In the 
left hand upper corner Europe and * mi e 
Africa appear as small islands. Such 
exaggerated local conceptions are by no means an 
Oriental peculiarity. The same may be noticed 
in every land, every neighborhood, and connected 
with every interest. Where, however, national 
or sectional vanity is in some measure corrected 
by geographical knowledge it often indemnifies 
itself by an overestimate of local excellencies. 
We are reminded of another instance of Eastern 
hyperbole. Ormuz, a barren rock in the Persian 
Gulf once of some little importance, occasioned 
the proverb, " The world is a ring, and Ormuz 
is the gem which it contains." In the religious 
and the churchly world a habit of excessive self- 
valuation often appears. Denominational opti- 
mism is nearly universal. Superiority of creed, 
culture, character, or worship is a claim which, 



4 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

with varying degrees of obtrusiveness, shows it- 
self on every side. Something of this may be 
seen in missionary movements. The periodicals 
and the platforms of different societies exhibit not 
unfrequently a certain amount of positive self- 
glorification, or the same is shown negatively by 
an ignorance or an ignoring of all others. 

The prevailing representation is that modern 
missions took their rise near the close of the last 
century. Even on an occasion so nearly ecumen- 
ical as that of the London Missionary Conference 
in 1888, individual limitation of historical range 
was frequently manifest. Indeed the gathering, 
great and valuable as it was, proceeded upon the 
basis of " a century," " the century," of missions 
reckoned from 1788 — a date having no special 
evangelistic significance, and as inappropriate as 
to reckon longitude eastward from nowhere, as- 
suming that there is no terrestrial area west from 
Greenwich. Prevailing misapprehension, which 
often appears still in missionary literature, needs 
to be corrected and the remoter genesis of this 
enterprise examined. As there were reformers 
before the Reformation, so there were missions 
long before the present evangelistic era. An 
adequate study on that line may serve to culti- 
vate in a self-complacent generation the wisdom 
of modesty. 

Protestant missions, it will be noticed, are an- 
nounced as now in hand. The very term Protes- 



PEEIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 5 

tant takes us at once to the sixteenth century 
Reformation. The genetic method of treat- 
ment — now happily becoming the more usual 
method — which recognizes the law of continuity 
in affairs human and divine, may 

i. i j j-i j. -u i. Period of the 

seem to demand that we begin at „ r 

° Reformation. 

the opening of the Christian era. 
That, however, would lead us through one belt 
of the entire wide field of church history down 
to modern times. But if in the course of the 
last eighteen hundred years there is any period 
at which a new order of things authorizes one 
to take a new and independent start in contem- 
plating evangelistic aggressiveness is it not the 
great upheaval of the sixteenth century? For 
Christendom it was much the same as one of 
the vast geological convulsions in the crust of 
our globe. 

Here at the very outset arises the question, 
Why were not foreign missions undertaken imme- 
diately upon that great overturning ? 
The reason is not far to find. There ° ltlca f n 

Financial. 

were conditions exceedingly unfavor- 
able to such movements. Political, social, and 
financial affairs seemed to forbid anything of the 
kind. Christendom had become an ecclesiastical 
empire, the state was nearly everywhere absorbed 
in the church, and wealth was largely . in the 
hands of the priesthood. The Head of the Holy 
Roman Empire, for example, received not a foot 



b PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

of territory in Germany or Italy with his imperial 
diadem. Maximilian affirmed that the pope had a 
hundred times as much revenue even from Ger- 
many as himself. The peasantry was everywhere 
in a deplorable condition. The knighthood had to 
a large extent degenerated into banditti. Religion 
was widely reduced to a round of externalities ; 
it was paganized. The abominable system of in- 
dulgences had become prevalent. Monks, like a 
swarm of harpies, preyed upon the people. The 
clergy, exempt from criminal law, was widely cor- 
rupt. Having sole authority to solemnize mar- 
riage, holding the keys of the unseen world, an 
unscrupulous priesthood had ample opportunities 
to enrich itself; wills were probated only in ec- 
clesiastical courts. Hades itself being annexed 
to the papal dominions, what fear of God or man 
could be expected to restrain a debased hierarchy? 
Religion became a synonym for extortion and 
social corruption. Not simply delinquencies, but 
debaucheries and atrocities prevailed. No won- 
der that an emperor of Austria — the compara- 
tively respectable Maximilian — on learning the 
treachery of Leo X exclaimed : " This pope, like 
the rest, is in my judgment a scoundrel. Hence- 
forth I can say that in all my life no pope has 
kept his word or faith with me. I hope, if God 
be willing, this one shall be the last of them." 
Even the vacillating Erasmus, who never had the 
courage of his convictions, wrote : " All sense of 



PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 7 

shame has vanished from human affairs. I see 
that the very height of tyranny has been reached. 
The pope and kings count the people not as men 
but as cattle in the market." Only those who 
had the courage of their ignorance could maintain 
willing fealty to such a system. If ever reform 
and revolution were needed on earth, was it not 
then? Papal Christendom had become as truly 
a missionary field as the unevangelized world is 
today. To reenthrone Christ instrumentally at 
the head of a spiritual Church was enough for 
men of the sixteenth century to accomplish. It 
was a struggle of life or death in which they 
were engaged. No thanks to Rome that Luther, 
Calvin, and Knox, instead of meeting the same 
fate as Savonarola, Ridley, and Cranmer, were 
permitted to die in their beds. With some show 
of reason might it be said there were neither 
men nor means for carrying on evangelism out- 
side of the nominally Christian world. The so- 
cial disturbances, insurrections, and wars that 
arose kept attention riveted upon more imme- 
diate surroundings. 

It should be borne in mind, also, that the very 
idea of a foreign promulgation of such degener- 
ate Christianity as then dominated Europe had 
become faint. The mighty spasm of the Crusades 
was not even military evangelism ; their futility 
and folly were conspicuous. For three hundred 
years the Roman Catholic Church had nearly 



8 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

ceased to be aggressive. Resistance to Moham- 
medans with force of arms appeared to be de- 
manded on the Continent by the instinct of 
self-preservation. Emancipation of society from 
the papal thraldom under which it had long 
been held could not be expected to bring with 
No it immediate breadth and symmetry 

Aggressive f religious thought and enterprise. 

Sentiment. A victim escap i ng f rom t he folds 

of a boa-constrictor is presumably not in the 
condition of a vigorous athlete. Great moral 
ideas and forces destined to affect remote regions 
are always of slow growth. Is an earthquake a 
favorable opportunity for measurements of lati- 
tude and longitude ? 

There was yet another reason — an inadequate 
apprehension of the predicted future of Christ's 
kingdom on earth. Reference is not now made 
to the literalistic fanaticism of Anabaptists, nor 
to clearly defined millenarianism, which, if based 
upon sober though mistaken interpretation of 
prophecy, may be no impediment, may even be 
an incentive to universal evangelism. Reference 
is had rather to a want of duly expanded views 
concerning the predicted scope of our Lord's 
spiritual dominion here below. The Reformers 
somewhat generally appeared not to take in the 
thought that there is a divine purpose and an 
imperative duty concerning the spread of Chris- 
tianity widely, most widely, beyond all limits 



PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 9 

hitherto attained. Their eschatology lacked such 
clear and settled consistency as imparts calmness 
and persistent energy in toiling for a remote end. 
It was colored by that haste of opinions and 
impatience of expectation which always mark 
critical epochs and times of excitement. Ex- 
traordinary events, whether plagues, conflagra- 
tions, or persecutions, have often stimulated a 
belief that the second advent of 

Christ in bodily presence and vis- „ ^ st 4 a , en 
J r Eschatology. 

ible reign on earth was near at 
hand, or else that the final judgment impended. 
It was assumed by Luther, for instance, that 
gospel promulgation had already reached its 
limits, and his eschatology neither suggested 
nor hardly admitted of foreign evangelism. He 
declared, "Another hundred years and all will 
be over." x 

Not quite a decade, however, had gone by 
after the death of Luther when a missionary 
movement began. In the year 1555 Henry II of 
France sent out a colony to Brazil — a country 
which had been discovered only half a century 
before (1500). The noble Huguenot, Gaspard 
de Coligni, strongly favored the measure, hoping 
that a retreat might thus be found for his per- 



1 Gustav Warneck : Abriss einer Geschichte der protestantischen 
Missionen. Leipzig, 1882 and 1883. Translated by Dr. Thomas 
Smith: Outline of the History of Protestant Missions. Edinburgh, 
1884. Pp. 11-22 ; 193-194. 



10 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

secuted Protestant brethren. That year (1555) 
witnessed the abdication of Charles V in favor 
of his son, Philip II, and Protestants in any 
kingdom might well have forebodings. The 
colonial enterprise referred to was headed by 
the Chevalier de Yillegagnon, an admiral in the 
French navy, who on arriving at Rio de Jan- 
eiro wrote back to Coligni for reinforcements, 
and wrote also to John Calvin, with whom he 
had been acquainted at the University of Paris, 

asking for divines from Geneva 
o ony m w ^ q should plant Christianity in 

that part of South America. 1 Ac- 
cordingly the next year (1556) fourteen men, 
two of them clergymen, started from Geneva, 
and in passing through France to the place of 
embarkation, Harfleur, were joined by about three 
hundred more. Three ships, furnished by the 
government, conveyed the company to Rio de 
Janeiro, where they experienced severe hardships. 
Little could be effected in the way of evangel- 
izing the natives, and yet a few conversions 
were reported. Villegagnon, apostatizing from 
the Protestant faith, proved a base traitor and 
as relentless a persecutor as any French cardinal 
could wish. That was contemporaneous with the 
martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer, the persecu- 
tion by Bloody Mary being in full tide. In 
less than a year some of the company in Brazil 

1 Note 1. 



PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 11 

embarked for Europe. A few of them escaped 
early by boat to the land they had just left, 
three of whom were, by orders from the infamous 
Villegagnon, thrown into the sea as heretics and 
drowned. One, named John Boles, a man of 
learning, escaped from the clutches of Ville- 
gagnon, but was arrested at the instance of Jes- 
uits, confined in prison for eight years, and then, 
by order of the Portuguese governor, executed 
as a warning to his countrymen if any of them 
were still in concealment. The story of hard- 
ships, starvation included, experienced by those 
who embarked for Europe during their five 
months' voyage in an unseaworthy vessel have 
few parallels in maritime history. 

Such were the character and speedy close of 
the first missionary adventure undertaken while 
the Reformation was yet in progress. It proved 
tragically abortive. Foreign evangelism was not, 
however, its mainspring. It was a colonial enter- 
prise, inspired primarily and principally by the 
desire of escaping persecution at home ; yet there 
entered into it a true missionary element, which 
showed that the claims of Christ's kingdom were 
not forgotten. 

The result of the experiment in South America 
seems to us now all the more sadly humiliating 
when we call to mind the simultaneous vaunted 
successes of Xavier in the East. The Apostle to 
the Indies, so called, had already rung his bell 



12 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

in the streets of Goa (1542) ; had labored among 
the pearl-fishers of Ceylon ; had baptized thou- 
sands in Travancore; had visited Malacca and 
Japan ; and near the coast of China, whither he 
was bound, Tiad closed his truly remarkable yet 
generally overrated career (1552). 

While it is the rise and early progress of mis- 
sions that we are to consider, it will not be amiss 
just to glance now and then at later movements 
which have local or other relations. As regards 
Brazil, not till within the last fifty years has 
Protestantism effected a lodgment in that coun- 
try, recently an empire, now a republic, and the 
youngest on the face of the earth. Its area is 
nearly equal to that of Europe, and among its 
population, numbering from ten to thirteen mil- 
lions, various bodies — Methodist, Episcopal, Pres- 
byterian, Baptist, in the United States, as well as 
one society or more in England — have estab- 
lished missions. The American Bible Society has 
aided the good work. One of the American so- 
cieties operating there has gathered a goodly 
number of churches, and no Yillegagnon can 
now banish evangelical Christians. 

The second Protestant missionary movement 
In of the sixteenth century originated 

Lapland. [ n ^he year 1559, four years after 
the foregoing ; and we now turn from tropical 
America to an arctic region of Scandinavia. 
Sweden has the honor of its origin — in which 



PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 13 

country Christianity first found lodgment about 
the year 1000, and was favored, as you recollect, 
by Olaf, its first king. You recall the labors 
at that period of Siegfried, the earnest English 
missionary. The Protestant Reformation had 
the patronage of Gustavus Vasa, cautious, yet 
bold when needful, and as resolutely vigorous 
as bold. 

When in the twelfth century Sweden subdued 
Finland compulsory conversion took place, and 
the Christianity of the conquering people was 
not, as may well be imagined, of the highest 
type. The old heathenism had its strongholds 
still. But slight impression had been made upon 
it in Lapland at the north — now no longer a 
geographical unit — a region chiefly within the 
arctic circle, and where in our day is found the 
most northern town of continental Europe. A re- 
gion where the sun does not rise in winter and 
where a night of three months reigns ; a region 
largely of dreary swamps ; a region nearly desti- 
tute at that time of hamlets — the sparse popula- 
tion being nomadic in their habits — was not a 
promising field for evangelistic effort. Arctic 
seas furnish only lower forms of animal life, 
and the tribes bordering upon those seas all 
round the northern land-circuit of our globe be- 
long to the lower grades of civilization. But 
they belong to the human race — to those for 
whom Christ died and to whom it is his order 



14 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

that the gospel be sent. King Gustavus felt in 
some measure the obligation, and sent a mission- 
ary thither. He also sent a proclamation order- 
ing the people to assemble at a given time with 
a view to pay their annual tax and to receive 
religious instruction. But neither the Swedish 
language nor the royal mandate was an appropri- 
ate medium of evangelization. Little could be ex- 
pected or was then effected. Yet the movement 
indicated the presence of an operative Scriptural 
idea. When in the next century Gustavus Adol- 
phus, an earnest Protestant and the most illus- 
trious monarch Sweden has ever had, interested 
himself in the work more was accomplished. Dur- 
ing his reign the first book in the language of 
the Lapps was printed (1619) at Stockholm, and 
amidst his campaign in Germany he was still 
mindful of that people. 

The last century, the eighteenth, witnessed a cer- 
tain amount of Swedish enthusiasm, temporarily at 
least, in behalf of Laplanders. The national Diet 
passed a resolution that the entire Sacred Scrip- 
tures should be translated into Lapponese. Within 
the present century the British and Foreign Bible 
Society has offered generous aid toward the sup- 
ply especially of New Testaments in that lan- 
guage. Yet to this day the Christianity of the 
Lapps is of a low type. While no great amount 
of vital piety, a great amount of intemperance 
may be witnessed. As with fruit trees in Lap- 



PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 15 

land, which are stunted and bear little or no fruit, 
so with the churches. 

The year 1637 was the date of a Swedish set- 
tlement on the east bank of the river Delaware 
in our country. This settlement bore 
the name of New Sweden. The en- _ e , w 

Sweden. 

terprise, undertaken by a sturdy ag- 
ricultural people, received encouragement from 
Oxenstiern, one of the greatest of statesmen, 
ranking with Coligni of France, in the foregoing 
century. From the mother country clergymen 
came to minister to the colonists, and also en- 
gaged to some extent in work among neighboring 
Indians. Campanius began Christian endeavor in 
behalf of the Delawares even earlier than John 
Eliot commenced his labors near Boston. Cam- 
panius preached in the vernacular, and translated 
Luther's catechism, as well as other elementary 
productions. The colony, however, adhered to 
the crown of Sweden only for a score of years. 
There was conflict with the Dutch of New Am- 
sterdam, now New York. Two forts, Casimir and 
Christina, had been erected, but an expedition 
under Governor Stuyvesant captured them and 
took the officers and principal inhabitants prison- 
ers. Mission work ceased, and the colonists, be- 
coming at length absorbed in the surrounding 
community, lost their native language. 

A few sporadic and individual movements 
also occurred. The case of Peter Heyling, the 



16 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

first German Protestant missionary, was unique, 
not only as that of a solitary standard bearer, 
but as involved in a certain amount of romance. 
Born at Liibeck in 1608, he went when twenty 
years of age (1628) to Paris for a four years' 
course of study. The Thirty Years' War, which 
so devastated Germany (1618-1648), destroying 
half her population and entailing serfdom upon 
her peasantry, was then in progress, 
„ ,. and it was the era of fierce ortho- 

Heyhng. 

doxy but of religious decline in the 
Lutheran Church. Young Heyling, however, had 
imbibed evangelical views and spirit from the 
writings of Luther, Arndt, Tauler, and Thomas a 
Kempis. At Paris he appears to have been in 
some measure on terms of intimacy with Gro- 
tius, then Dutch ambassador at the French court. 
More noteworthy was his association with other 
like-minded evangelical German students in Paris. 
Heyling became convinced that foreign mission- 
ary service was obligatory, and the same year 
that Jesuits were expelled from Abyssinia (1632) 
he, though not aware of this fact, started for 
that country. Stopping at Malta he studied the 
Arabic, then visited Alexandria, Cairo, and Jeru- 
salem. He formed the acquaintance of Coptic 
monks at their monasteries in Egypt, and ap- 
pears to have been everywhere faithful to his 
evangelical convictions and not wholly without 
success in promoting spiritual interests. At 



PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 17 

length, in 1634, he had opportunity to accompany 
the new Abuna on his way to Abyssinia, where 
Heyling met with a favorable reception, and be- 
sides other labors translated the New Testament 
into Amharic as then spoken, thus performing a 
service similar to what Frumentius did twelve 
hundred years before. 

In the career of Heyling there are points of 
resemblance to that of Henry Martyn, and one 
is that he died on his way back to Europe. 1 

It is a coincidence not unworthy of notice 
that just two hundred years after Heyling started 
(1632) for Abyssinia two representatives of the 
Church Missionary Society, one of them after- 
wards Bishop Gobat, started (1832) for the same 
country. Others, Isenberg and Krapf, followed 
(1837); and the St. Chrischona Institution, near 
Basle, has also sent out several men. But at the 
present time there are no Protestant missionaries 
in that Switzerland of Africa — a fact due largely 
to Roman Catholic intrigue. Would that some 
Ethiopian treasurer might now receive the bap- 
tism of the Spirit and go on his way of home 
evangelism rejoicing ! 

Among individuals in the seventeenth century 
deeply moved on the subject of 
missions Justinian Yon Welz stands 
conspicuous. He was a baron belonging to an 
ancient and honorable Austrian family, and born 

1 Note 2. 



18 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

December 12, 1621. That year witnessed a total 
suppression of Protestantism in Bohemia, followed 
by a fearful persecution of malcontents, and the 
father of Welz removed to Saxony. It was not 
strange that the first publication, in his twentieth 
year, of young Welz, who had been well edu- 
cated, should be an able treatise on tyranny. 1 He 
became profoundly impressed with the obligation 
of Christians to send the gospel to Mohammedans 
and the heathen, and beginning in 1664 he issued 
successive appeals to the German nobility, uni- 
versity professors, and the clergy, setting forth 
vigorously the claims of the unevangelized. Nor 
was he a mere unpractical declaimer. He depos- 
ited twelve thousand German dollars toward the 
establishment of a seminary for the education of 
missionary candidates, and advocated the estab- 
lishment of a missionary department or college 
in all Protestant universities, each to have three 
professors — one of Oriental languages, one of 
evangelistic methods, and one of ecclesiastical 
history and geography. His appeals were more 
especially to those holding the Augsburg Confes- 
sion, and he put questions plain and pertinent 
like these: "Is it right to keep the gospel to 
ourselves? Is it right that students of theology 
should be confined to home parishes ? Is it right 

1 Tractatus de tyrannide. Lugduni Batavorum. 1641. In 1643 
a second edition appeared, with the title De Tyrannorum ingenio 
et arcanis artibus Liber. Lugduni Batavorum. 



PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 19 

for Christians to spend so much on clothing, 
eating, and drinking, and to take no thought to 
spread the gospel?" A few Lutheran pastors and 
university professors expressed approbation of the 
object urged by Welz, but interest enough to form 
a missionary society could not be evoked. Super- 
intendent Ursinus, of Regensburg — not Zacharias 
Ursinus, who was of the preceding century — 
wrote against the proposed movement and grossly 
abused the baron. The attitude of Ursinus and 
his qualification for judging a man inflamed with 
the missionary spirit may be learned from what 
he says of the Greenlanders, Lapps, Tartars, and 
Japanese, " The holy things of God are not to 
be cast before such dogs and swine ! " It is 
doubtful if a sheet let down from heaven, with 
all manner of four-footed beasts, would have 
convinced him, as it did Peter, that such Gen- 
tiles are entitled to have the gospel. Welz 
could obtain the publication of his works only 
in Holland. 

True there was a tinge of enthusiasm in this 
man. The absence of all effective sympathy for 
the undertaking proposed and indifference to plain 
Christian duty stirred a measure of indignation 
on his part. Some degree of acerbity and impa- 
tience mingled unwisely with his animadversions, 
but a fanatic he was not. His motives were un- 
impeachable, his perseverance laudable, and at 
length, having resigned titles of honor, he went 



20 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

out to Surinam, the Dutch colony which has been 
spoken of, as a missionary to the heathen, where 
he soon died, in the year 1668. 

In the Lutheran Church that was a period of 
lifeless orthodoxy and of fierce polemics. To the 
worldliness and torpidity of that church must be 
charged mediately the heated spirit and almost 
heartbreak of this self-sacrificing man. Reason- 
able response to his clarion summons would prob- 
ably have saved him to a noble service in the 
church and for the church and have proved an 
unmeasured benediction to Germany. He was 
the Count Zinzendorf of that period, in advance 
of his age, and without Zinzendorfs favoring 
opportunity for usefulness. 

Most meager, then, were the missionary move- 
ments and results of Protestantism in the six- 
teenth century. Indeed, as now commonly un- 
derstood, missions, denoting evangelism among a 
foreign people the main aim, hardly existed. A 
migration abroad for political and personal rea- 
sons is not missionary, while Christian endeavor 
in behalf of one's fellow citizens or one's sub- 
jects is home missionary. Still, the new reli- 
gious life that was awakened at the Reformation 
had a germ destined to expand and bear fruit 
as time went on. 

In all human affairs movements comparatively 
ill-advised, badly administered, and abortive usu- 
ally precede and help to prepare for those more 



PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 21 

wisely planned and which give more assurance of 
success. Not only so, but beneficent enterprises 
usually have an inconspicuous origin. There is 
an old proverb, " The streams which turn the 
mill clappers of the world often rise in solitary 
places." 



22 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. 



DUTCH MISSIONS. 



LECTUEE II. — EAELY DUTCH MISSIONS. 

The Protestant movements of the sixteenth 
and early part of the seventeenth centuries, col- 
lective and individual, though feeble and well- 
nigh fruitless, revealed germinant thoughts. The 
blade was then scarcely above ground ; in the 
eighteenth century the ear was to be seen ; 
the full corn in the ear did not show itself 
before the era in which we now live. 

Advancing from the sixteenth to the seven- 
teenth century we observe an evolution from a 
precursory period into a period pre- 
n i liminary to formal missionary organ- 

ization. Here Holland first attracts 
our attention. The enterprising spirit of the 
Dutch was at once a prophecy and a pledge that 
the Protestant Reformation would find lodgment 
in the Netherlands. Nowhere else, however, in 
Europe were its advent and progress met by 
heavier persecution or more high-handed tyranny. 
No one whose nerves are not firm, and who has 
not self-control sufficient to curb an indignation 



EARLY DUTCH MISSIONS. 23 

that might cause rupture of the heart, should 
read the history of Holland at that period. The 
Emperor Charles V, after sanctioning many a hol- 
ocaust of Protestants, resigned the sovereignty of 
the Netherlands and other hereditar}^ possessions 
(1555) in favor of his son, Philip II. His dying 
injunction to this worthy successor reads, " Deal 
to all heretics the extremest rigor of the law, 
without respect of persons and without regard 
to any favoring pleas." Never was an atrocious 
order carried out with more truculent persist- 
ency. Philip, by nature cold and cruel, schooled 
himself systematically in deception, yet was punc- 
tiliously bigoted in observing outward religious 
formalities. Destitute of principle, he was domi- 
nated by the notion that royalty is irresponsible, 
that deceit is the soul of diplomacy, and, before 
all, that no faith is to be kept with heretics. 
Nothing more clearly reveals his character than 
some of his orders and utterances. " All who 
reject Rome," he wrote, "are heretics. Enforce 
the edicts against all sectaries, without any dis- 
tinction or mercy, if they be merely spotted with 
Luther's errors." 

This sullen and relentless despot had no diffi- 
culty in finding sympathetic agencies — a pope 
ready with dispensations for perjury, a cardinal 
steeped in the ethics of Jesuitism, and a general- 
issimo unmatched in diabolism save by the prince 
of darkness. Duke Alva is to be mentioned only 



24 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

with bated breath, his doings recorded only in 
lurid lines shading off harmoniously with the pit 
of outer darkness. His sentiments at one with 
those of his master in Spain, he could write con- 
genially to Catherine de' Medici, in whose soul 
was hatched the Saint Bartholomew massacre. 
After the destruction of Naardin he could write 
to Philip, " The army cut the throats of all ; not 
a mother's son was left alive." His last act be- 
fore leaving Netherlands was to roast over a slow 
fire a Protestant gentleman of Ghent. On the 
journey back to Spain he boasted that in a five 
years' administration eighteen thousand and six 
hundred citizens had been done to death by the 
headsman ; but in that boast no account was taken 
of the thousands upon thousands of both sexes 
and all ages, victims of battle, siege, famine, and 
massacre. 

The tools of Alva and his successors in office 
were of the same school of religious and political 
malignity. Protestants were looked upon simply 
as so much prey, and their possessions as law- 
ful booty. Women were buried alive merely for 
reading the Bible. Men were sacrificed with no 
charge of overt offense, but only for their thoughts. 
Throngs of ancient heathens could shout Ad 
hones (" To the lions ") with the Christians ; but 
it was reserved for Christian Spaniards to shout 
Ad patibulum (" To the gallows ") with men 
whose only crime was lack of faith in a heathen- 



EARLY DUTCH MISSIONS. 25 

ized Christianity. It was not only in war time 
that brutality and butchery were rife, but in the 
leisure of peace. Tens of thousands of refugees 
betook themselves to other countries ; trade and 
manufactures were at times nearly suspended ; 
dikes were down ; cattle were swept away ; dwell- 
ings — whole cities, indeed — were burned to the 
ground. 

Jehovah of hosts interposed. Never since Is- 
rael's great lawgiver and general had there been 
raised up for the deliverance of a harried people a 
man more self-poised, more sagacious as a states- 
man, more self-sacrificing as a patriot, more trust- 
ful in the God of justice, than William the Silent. 
Once only in the long struggle against desperate 
odds did he lose heart. It became a question 
whether the inhabitants should not flee the land, 
open all the sluices, and let the sea once more 
have sway, washing a soil so plentifully stained 
with innocent blood. But William dismissed the 
thought ; he continued to plan wisely and to act 
with energy. 

Out of such materials as remained after the 
Spanish Inquisition and the armies of Spain had 
done their work he founded the Dutch Republic. 
To his immortal honor be it recorded, he was the 
first of modern rulers in Europe to proclaim and 
act upon the principle of religious toleration, and 
that, too, in spite of provocation to retaliate such 
as no European ruler ever had. Philip set a price 



26 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

upon his head, and he fell (1584) by the hand 
of a Catholic assassin. 

Not till 1590 did the seven provinces succeed 
in finally expelling the Spaniards, and not till 
nineteen years later (1609) did they secure recog- 
nition of their independence of Roman Catholic 
archdukes. It is a decisive proof of recuperative 
energy and signal enterprise that they should so 
soon after the wild butchery and robbery to which 
they had been subjected begin to compete with 
Spain and Portugal for the lucrative trade of the 
East, and should secure a permanent foothold in 
Opportunity Java (1595), an island larger than 
for Portugal. Before long a Dutch East 

Missions. j n( jia Company is chartered (1602), 
having powers and a history not unlike that of 
England, which was incorporated two or three 
years before (December 31, 1599). A little later 
still (1607) conquests began. The Moluccas were 
subdued and the Portuguese rule in Ceylon was 
terminated. Just one hundred years after the 
Portuguese began to secure possessions in the 
Orient (1509) the States General of Holland ap- 
pointed (1609) a governor general of their new 
acquisitions in the same quarter. Before very 
many years Spanish and Portuguese possessions 
and trade in the East were to a large extent 
captured by the Dutch. 

It might be expected that a people who had 
carried to its successful issue a long struggle with 



EAULY DUTCH MISSIONS. 27 

the autocrat of half the civilized world — a people 
whose martyrs could go to the stake singing Te 
Deum laudamus, whose very country was cre- 
ated by the Reformation, would bethink them- 
selves early of religious duty to those far away as 
well as to those living behind their native dikes. 
There is evidence that evangelization was in 
the thoughts of Protestant Hollanders from the 
very outset of their commercial enterprises. Let- 
ters patent granted to the East India Company, 
like those of the English colonies in the same 
century, show that at least a subsidiary and os- 
tensible object was to make known 
the gospel among heathen peoples. vai J^ e l f m 
The want of men duly qualified and 
ready for pastoral, chaplain, and missionary serv- 
ice gave rise at the opening of this period to 
efforts for supplying the deficiency. The direct- 
ors of the company just named showed (1616) 
that they had in mind a college for that purpose. 
Two years later appeared a stirring appeal 1 on 
the duty of sending the gospel to India. It was 
dedicated to Prince Maurice, and urged motives 
similar to what have since been pleaded by Eng- 
lish Christians regarding possessions on both sides 
of the Ganges. The author, Justus Heurnius, 
was then a student of theology, who afterwards 
became himself a missionary and who reminds us 
of our Gordon Hall. Nor was this the only 



Admonitio de legatione evangelica ad Tndos capissenda. 



28 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

work of the kind at that early day. Sebastian 
Dankaerts, a preacher in Amboyna, the most im- 
portant island of the Molucca group, wrote ably 
in behalf of the cause. His book, printed (1621) 
with the approbation of the faculty at Leyden, 
was dedicated to the States General. The same 
year, and it was one year after the Pilgrims 
landed at Plymouth, the synod of South Holland 
took action relating to mission work in the East. 
Some friends of the cause entertained the thought 
of having natives sent to Holland for education ; 
some proposed a training school, besides other 
schools, in the East. The directors of the East 
India Company sought counsel from the faculty 
at Leyden in relation to a seminary or college for 
educating laborers who should go out to their 
foreign possessions. 1 Such a thought 

Missionary i n ,i . -, 

c .. was in advance 01 anything known 

at the time elsewhere on the Conti- 
nent or in England. A plan embracing twenty 
specifications was drawn up by Anthony Walaeus, 
one of the professors, who became the principal 
of the college or seminary. He drafted twenty- 
two well-considered regulations relating to do- 
mestic habits and to the studies of the young 
men. In the seminary Latin was to be the sole 
language of social intercourse. He gave instruc- 
tion regarding methods of reaching the heathen 
and of training converts. 

1 Seminar ium Indicum. 



EARLY DUTCH MISSIONS. 29 

It is a noteworthy coincidence that the same 
year (1622) which witnessed the founding of this 
institute was signalized also by the establishment 
at Rome r of the Catholic Propaganda, consisting 
of thirteen cardinals, two priests, and a monk, 
having for its object foreign missions and the 
conversion of heretics; but the Catholic college 
for training missionaries dates five years later 
(1627). The celebrated Propaganda remains to 
this day an efficient institution for systematic 
proselytism, while the seminary at Leyden lasted 
only ten years and graduated only twelve alumni. 2 

The chief object of nearly all ministers who 
went to the Netherlands East Indies was, it should 
be stated, the religious welfare of Dutch resi- 
dents, yet the heathen and Roman Catholics were 
also in mind. A good deal was done, from time 
to time, toward supplying native converts of dif- 
ferent nationalities with the Word of God. It 
deserves notice that at this period Grotius wrote 
(1627) his celebrated work on The Truth of Chris- 
tianity 3 expressly for the aid of missionaries. 

In the East Indies missionary work was car- 
ried on at numerous points. Among the earlier 
ordained men who went from Holland to the 
East must be reckoned some able and evangel- 



1 By the bull Inscrutabili divince providentice arcano. 

2 Dr. J. A. Grothe in Missionszeitschrift. Band IX. 1882. 
S. 16-26; 85-92. 

3 De Veritate Religionis Christiana. 



30 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

ical ministers. Numerous conversions were re- 
ported. 1 Thus within a year or two (1621) 
after the founding of Batavia as the capital of 
Netherlands East Indies many thou- 
anous san( ][ baptisms were said to have 

Localities. r 

taken place. In 1627 the first Dutch 
minister, George Candidius, appeared at a place 
called Fort Zeeland, on Formosa, " the beautiful 
island," off the coast of China. Robert Junius, 
who was sent out (1631) by the governor of the 
United Provinces, mastered the language of that 
island, and it is stated that in the course of twelve 
years five thousand nine hundred heathens were 
brought to Christ by him. So many were, at least, 

baptized. He gathered twenty-three 
/f tern congregations and provided pastors 

for them. He trained native assist- 
ants. At one time there were eight stationed 
preachers, and by 1645 word was sent, " The peo- 
ple of Formosa are no longer heathen." 2 But 
in 1661 the famous Chinese pirate, Coxinga, in- 
vaded the island, slaughtered many of the con- 
verts, and for nearly two hundred years Formosa 
was again given up to heathenism. 

The Dutch secured a foothold on the southern 
peninsula of India, and in 1636 there was at 



1 Brown, William : History of Missions. Third edition. 1864. 
Vol. I, pp. 10-30. R. Grundemann : Die evangelische Mission in 
Indischen Archipel. Burkhardt, 1880. 

2 Note 3. 



EAKLY DUTCH MISSIONS. 31 

Pulicat, twenty miles north from Madras, a con- 
gregation of Protestant Christians, the first any- 
where in the eastern portion of that continent. 
Portuguese sway on Ceylon having given way 
to that of Netherlands, Hornhonius, the pioneer 
Dutch minister on that island, ar- 
rived 1642. In the progress of con- 
quest and civil administration multitudes of al- 
leged conversions took place. Only five years 
later (1647) the Dutch introduced Christianity 
into Amboyna. Forty years after that (1686) 
one minister at the capital had, if a statement 
is to be credited, baptized something like thirty 
thousand converts. Further details of this seven- 
teenth century work in the Orient are not needed 
to show that territorially it was wide and numer- 
ically considered it was fruitful. 1 

An endeavor in South America also deserves 
notice. Possessions were acquired (1624) by Neth- 
erlands in Guiana — then a part of Brazil, now 
Surinam — and there was a Dutch West India 
Company as well (1621). That company, even 
more than the one operating in the East Indies, 
had regard to the evangelizing of native tribes. 
This was due in large measure to the decidedly 
religious character of John Maurice, of Nassau, 
who, as governor general, with twelve ships, ar- 
rived at Pernambuco in January, 163T. In mil- 



1 Note 4. 



32 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

itary command and in civil administration he 
exhibited much wisdom and efficiency. Like 
William the Silent he aimed at religious tolera- 
tion. Portuguese Catholics and Jews had occa- 
sion to trust and respect him. He 
introduced Protestant preachers ; he 
established schools ; he encouraged useful trans- 
lations into the native vernacular. Niggardli- 
ness, misnamed economy, on the part of the com- 
pany's directors obliged Maurice to resign his 
office (1644). The colony began at once to de- 
cline, and at length, in 1667, was surrendered 
to the Portuguese. This Protestant endeavor, 
though by no means so disastrous as that far- 
ther south in Brazil a century before, left no 
permanent fruits. 1 

Returning now to the work as carried on in 
the East Indies, we must look at certain of its 
features, and we shall be compelled to acknowl- 
edge that no small discount must be made. The 
regulation term of service for minis- 
ters going out from the mother coun- 
try was only five years, which implied a very 
different attitude of mind and degree of interest 
in the field from what would have been were the 
enlistment for life. 2 



1 Prof. Theo. Christlieb in Missionszeitschrlft. Band VII. 1880. 
S. 564-574, and authorities there cited. 

2 Note 5. 



EAULY DUTCH MISSIONS. 33 

Comparatively few of the ministers acquired 
sufficient knowledge of native languages to com- 
municate freely with those who Vernaculars 
used them. Without such mastery not Mastered, 
of a vernacular preachers can have small reason- 
able hope of usefulness. 

A more serious criticism relates to the insuffi- 
cient conditions required for baptism, and the gen- 
eral superficiality of religious instruction. Like 
a frequent Roman Catholic usage, it was a singu- 
lar and inexcusable defect to demand so little 
knowledge of the great truths of our holy reli- 
gion and no evidence of a heart-acceptance of the 
same preparatory to an ordinance which sealed 
the subject as a Christian professor. Evidence 
of spiritual conversion not being required, onlv 
a religious veneering could be ex- 
pected, and to a wide extent not even T uper 

r Instruction. 

so much was put on. A duplicate 
life might too generally be seen — that of nominal 
Christianity and one of real heathenism, just as 
Julian the Apostate would pray to Christ by day 
and to some Roman divinity by night. Indis- 
criminate baptism is a bane instead of a blessing 
— is a mockery of "the washing of regeneration 
and renewing of the Holy Ghost." 

But the most censurable feature of Dutch ad- 
ministrative proceedings in the East was the polit- 
ical bounty put upon a profession of Christianity. 
The Portuguese predecessors of the Dutch had, by 



34 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

presenting unworthy motives, secured multitudes 
of adherents, and Oriental aptitude for hypoc- 
risy had thus received special culture at Western 
hands. There was all the more readiness for an- 
other religious somersault when worldly interest 
made that a politic maneuver. Baptism being a 
condition of employment, of promotion, and even 
of protection under law by new masters, Cath- 
olics and heathens alike were only too ready to 
qualify in this cheap way for secular advantages. 
Thousands upon thousands needed no persuasion 
beyond obvious social and pecuniary 

ecu ar perquisites to renounce Brahmanism, 

Inducements. r ^ t ' 

Buddhism, or Romanism. When at 

a later day certain Netherlands possessions were 
captured by the English, and Protestantism no 
longer held out attractions of lucre or honor, 
open relapse was a most natural result. When the 
vanquishers retired their religion vanished, and no 
martyrdom for Christ's sake, as in Madagascar, 
could be looked for. Where no change of moral 
character takes place change of name costs nothing 
to conscience and is only a matter of loss or gain. 
Let evangelism become a department of civil gov- 
ernment * and Christ's spiritual kingdom will make 
little progress. Of that kingdom the Dutch in 
their mission work entertained inadequate views, 
and nowhere is theological deficiency, unconcern, 
or error so mischievous as on missionary ground. 

1 Note 6. 



EARLY DUTCH MISSIONS. 35 

It will be a pardonable digression if we glance 
at present operations. That island group, the 
Dutch East Indies, of which we now speak — 
forming a bridge from the Continent to Australia, 
and through which midway passes the equator — 
is the largest archipelago in the world. Its col- 
lective area equals nearly one third 
of continental Europe, and at the . .. 

present time has a population of be- 
tween twenty and thirty millions — a larger num- 
ber than Great Britain — and next to India is 
the most valuable foreign possession belonging to 
any country. The Dutch are now the most in- 
fluential power there, and their possessions, an 
empire in extent, unlike India, yield income to 
the national exchequer. 

After a long, dreary period of mechanical and 
external Christianity in the East and of religious 
decline in the home country, a revived mission- 
ary spirit began to show itself in Holland about 
a century since. This stood connected with the 
evangelistic uprising in England. The celebrated 
Vanderkemp, who soon after entered the service 
of the London Missionary Society (1798), was 
active in the formation (1797) of the Netherlands 
Missionary Society, which has carried on work in 
Java, Amboyna, and Celebes and reports twenty 
thousand church members, and adherents in much 
larger numbers (ninety thousand). Half a cen- 
tury went by before any other missionary move- 



3b PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

ment took place. As the Rhine comes down tur- 
bid from the south, so from the same quarter a 
stream of rationalistic influences has left muddy 
deposits in Holland. The administration of the 
forenamed society having fallen into the hands 
of unevangelical men, the Dutch Missionary* So- 
ciety was founded (1858) by men of a different 
type of belief and action. Their chief work has 
been among the Sundanese, of Western Java, 
who number four millions and are Mohammed- 
ans. Evangelism among Mohammedans every- 
where encounters special obstacles, 

_ ^ f. yet since the commencement of oper- 
Societies. J r 

ations some measure of success has 
been realized there, and the Bible has been given 
to the people in their own tongue. A year later 
(1859) another organization, the Dutch Reformed 
Missionary Society, was founded at Amsterdam. 
Its distinctive principle is that churches, not so- 
cieties, should conduct such work. Its chief field 
is in Central Java. There are yet other societies 
in Holland — about a dozen all told — with be- 
tween fifty and a hundred missionaries scattered 
over the archipelago. In the Celebes a flourish- 
ing operation has been carried on ; numerous 
adherents have been gained. 1 



1 J. C.Neurdenberg: Geschiedenis tegenover Kritich. Rotterdam, 
1864. R. Grundemann : Johann Friedrich Riedel, ein Lebensbild 
aus der Minahassa auf Celebes. Giitersloh, 1873. 



EAELY DUTCH MISSIONS. 37 

Dutch evangelism in the East has been con- 
ducted during the present century upon sounder 
principles than in the seventeenth century, yet 
there appears still to be too great readiness to 
administer baptism. 1 

The Rhenish Missionary Society, also, having 
begun in 1861, carries on work in two or three 
islands of that widespread group. Nor is it 
wholly out of place to add here that the Amer- 
ican Board established a mission at Batavia as 
long ago as 1836. Special embarrassments were 
met with, and after a dozen years the undertak- 
ing was relinquished (1849). The 
same board contemplated also a mis- _ . er 

r m m Societies. 

sion in Sumatra, an island twice as 
large as Holland itself; but the two pioneers, 
Lyman and Munson, were killed by the Battas 
(1834), and with that sad event the enterprise 
terminated. 2 The Presbyterian Church of Eng- 
land began work in Formosa 1865, and seven 
years from that time the Presbyterian Church of 
Canada opened work on the island. 

Regarding the Netherlands East Indies, certain 
circumstances not yet alluded to are sadly sug- 
gestive. Prior to the Dutch possessions in this 



1 Brown, William : History of Christian Missions. Third edi- 
tion. In three volumes. London, 1864. Vol. I, pp. 514-519. 

2 Thompson, William : Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel Munson and 
the Rev. Henry Lyman. New York, 1839. The Martyr of Sumatra : 
a Memoir of Henry Lyman. New York, 1856. 



38 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

Eastern Archipelago Mohammedanism had ob- 
tained but little hold comparatively. Wherever 
Islam at the present time encounters heathenism 
it gains proselytes, and this is especially true 
where natives are more immediately under Dutch 
rule. Government officials have a train of infe- 

Growth of r ^ or °ffi cers > as clerks, interpreters, 
Moham- policemen, and tradesmen, and the 

medanism. Malay is the language of common 
intercourse, but nearly all who learn the Malay 
become Mohammedans. Thus under a European 
Christian power Mohammedanism is making more 
progress than anywhere else on the face of the 
earth. 

Government neutrality, as it is called, regard- 
ing religion operates often, as in British India, 
adversely to the interests of Christianity. 1 Hol- 
land has not yet fulfilled the evident providen- 
tial purpose for which she was brought into con- 
nection with numerous unevangelized peoples. 
She has enriched herself without communicating 
largely the riches of the kingdom. 



1 Dr. Schreiber in Proceedings of the General Conference on For- 
eign Missions, held in London, 1878. London, 1879. Pp. 137-141. 
Also, A. Schreiber : Die Kirche und die Mission in Niederlandisch 
Indien. Leyden, 1883. 



EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 39 



ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 



LECTUEE III. — EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 

We have seen that in the line of foreign evan- 
gelization little could reasonably be expected 
during the sixteenth century Reformation. We 
have seen that perfidy and bitter disappointment 
awaited the first Protestant mission. We have 
seen that superficial Roman Catholic conquests 
in heathen lands might be followed in some in- 
stances by Protestant methods scarcely less su- 
perficial ; that it matters little who presents the 
mercenary motives of office and emolument as a 
bonus on church membership ; such conversions 
can be depended upon as spurious. Virtual coer- 
cion by the Dutch in their East India possessions 
— the penalty of imprisonment or the whipping 
post for participating in heathen rites — was a 
school of hypocrisy and aversion to Christianity. 
A great mistake teaches a great lesson. 

The seventeenth century and the first half of 
the eighteenth were, in spiritual and evangelis- 
tic conditions, the Dark Ages of Protestantism. 
Yet there were gleams of light — foregleams of 



40 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

the brighter day that has since dawned. What 
seemed to be isolated and exceptional tokens of 
expansive religious life were, after all, proof of 
continuous vitality, sometimes manifestly increas- 
ing in volume and then apparently 
ebbing. The stream, however, was 
perennial though feeble, like the Orange River 
of South Africa, which in a part of its course 
loses by evaporation more than is gained by a 
few affluents, but which at length makes its con- 
tribution to the great sea. 

We today resume incipient missionary move- 
ments in the seventeenth century, and particu- 
larly those from Great Britain. Our own polit- 
ical and social condition and the very blood in 
our veins have intimate concern in the country 
and the period to which thought now turns. 
Protestant evangelism this side of the Atlantic 
was the earliest undertaken or fostered by the 
English, and is to be contemplated in connec- 
tion with events anterior to the colonial period. 
In England the great convulsion of the six- 
teenth century began otherwise than on the Con- 
tinent; it began as revolution rather than ref- 
ormation. The realm had been ecclesiastically 
governed by Rome ; but there now came a polit- 
ical revolt from Rome, not the triumph of a 
party, but the exploit of a nation. It was due 
less to a revival of religious truth than to an 
exigency of the state. At first the needs of the 



EAKLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. . 41 

Church had not so much to do with it as the 
future of the throne: Henry the Eighth cared 
little for doctrine and less for liberty so he might 
make sure of the succession to his own family. 
General freedom of thought and religious tolera- 
tion were nearly as foreign to the king's purpose 
then as they had been in any former reign. Re- 
ligious supremacy was simply transferred from 
the Vatican to the royal palace of England ; her- 
esy was still a penal offense ; and thus things 
continued substantially all through Tudor and 
Stuart domination. Along with the Reformation 
gradual yet partial spread of Prot- in 

estantism came a contest with mo- England, 
narchical and ecclesiastical prerogative. Arbi- 
trary proceedings, for the most part, characterized 
monarchy, while tyrannical intolerance charac- 
terized high churchism. James the First, that 
compound of pedantry, arrogance, and meanness, 
gave utterance to the prevailing sentiment of a 
long line of crowned heads, most of whom had 
a more prudent tongue, though a mind no less 
domineering than his. " It is presumption," said 
he, "and high contempt in a subject to dispute 
what a king may do, or say that a king cannot 
do this or that." But such exuberant insolence 
was destined to rough abatement. Exaction, 
perfidy, profligacy, were to encounter deserved 
rebuke. The scaffold gave significant warning 
when it brought the next reign to a close. Oli- 



42 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

ver Cromwell did not hesitate to say that, meet- 
ing a king in battle, he would shoot him as soon 
as any man. At the opening of his second Par- 
liament he announced a sentiment than which 
none more just was ever listened to by legisla- 
tors: "The mind is the man. If that be kept 
pure, a man signifies somewhat ; if not, I would 
fain see what difference there is 'twixt him and 
a beast." For a century the struggle went on; 
slowly the spirit which was to effect freedom of 
speech and of the press at last became vigorous. 
Fines, imprisonments, mutilation, and burning 
helped on the movement toward securing a rep- 
resentative government — a government not for 
the few but for the many. Pilgrim and Puritan 
found no sanction in God's Word for kingly ju- 
risdiction over men's thoughts and beliefs, and 
so left the mother country, which had become 
an intensely cruel stepmother. For more than a 
century England has now at last had sovereigns 
who were moderately capable of learning lessons 
from their people. 

As on the continent of Europe, so in Great 
Britain there were, only more numerous, single 
schemes during the seventeenth century, which 
for the most part proved transient and ineffec- 
tual. They show, however, that evangelistic duty 
was gaining place in the thoughts of Christian 
people. Even in the previous century such 
thoughts were not wholly wanting. Hakluyt re- 



EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 43 

lates that on board one of Frobisher's fifteen 
ships, with which that enterprising navigator 
sailed (1578) in search of a northwest passage to 
India, was a minister by the name 
of Wolfall, who had it in charge not _ _ 1V1 * 

' & Movements. 

only to act as chaplain of the fleet, 
but also to remain for a time in Greenland and 
attempt the conversion of natives there. But the 
expedition was a failure, and missionary work out 
of the question. 

As time rolled on civil and ecclesiastical op- 
pression set good men to thinking of the unevan- 
gelized, who were in a condition yet more deplor- 
able than their own. Joseph Alleine, author of 
a book widely read, An Alarm to the Unconverted, 
was an earnestly pious man, and, after being 
ejected from his living at Taunton by the Bar- 
tholomew Act, made up his mind to proceed to 
China or some other heathen country where he 
might preach the gospel, which was forbidden 
him to do in England ; but he did not carry 
out the resolution. The Rev. John Oxenbridge, 
ejected by the same forenamed act of intolerance, 
went with missionary purposes to Surinam, South 
America, and thence to the island of Barbadoes. 
He afterwards came to Boston, where he pub- 
lished a small book entitled A Proposition of 
Propagating the Grospel by Christian Colonies in 
the Continent of Q-uiana. He died in Boston, 
1674. A good deal of interest began to be felt 



44 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

in the North American tribes, and, for instance, 
Dr. Lake, Bishop of Bath and Wells, declared 
that nothing but old age kept him from going 
out as a missionary. The learned Dr. Thomas 
Hyde, professor of Arabic at Oxford, and after- 
wards professor of Hebrew, proposed (1677) that 
Christ Church, Oxford, should be used as a train- 
ing college for missionary candidates. 

Oliver Cromwell at an earlier date had a scheme 
for changing old Chelsea College into a sort of 
Downing Street center of council and of training 
evangelists for the Indies, East and 
lver n West, for Turkey and Scandinavia, 
as well as for labor among Roman 
Catholics. His project was a noble one — the 
world to be divided into four great mission prov- 
inces, and the bureau of propagandism to have 
four secretaries paid by the state. The course 
of political events cut short the scheme. 

A large number of pastors — about seventy — 
English and Scottish, sent up a petition to Parlia- 
ment in 1644, that encouragement be given to 
missionaries who should go out to America and 
the West Indies. To the high honor of Crom- 
well and the Long Parliament, an ordinance was 
passed (1649) creating the " Corporation for the 
Propagation of the Gospel in New England" — the 
first Protestant missionary body in Great Britain. 

But the man who during the seventeenth cen- 
tury stands out most conspicuously in England 



EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 45 

for effective efforts to promote foreign evangeli- 
zation is Sir Robert Boyle x — an ornament of his 
country and his age, a man who could afford to 
decline a peerage repeatedly offered him, one of 
the founders of the Royal Society, born the same 
year that Lord Bacon died (1626), eminent for 
his religious character and his beneficence. He 
amply rewarded Dr. Edward Pocock for rendering 

into Arabic the work of Grotius, 
._. T _ . m > ,> -r> 7 • • Robert Boyle. 

Ve Veritate Cnnstiance lieligionis, 

which, as mentioned in a former lecture, was 
written with reference to aiding missionaries in 
the East. Sir Robert assumed the entire ex- 
pense of printing that work, and then took pains 
to have it circulated in countries where the Ara- 
bic is spoken. One department of his labors in 
diffusing Sacred Scriptures was the publishing at 
his own expense of the four Gospels and the 
Acts of the Apostles in Malay. The printing 
was executed (1677) in Roman character at 
Oxford under the superintendence of Dr. Hyde, 
whose name has just been mentioned. Boyle's 
last will and testament devoted five thousand 
four hundred pounds to the propagation of Chris- 
tianity among unevangelized and unenlightened 
peoples — the largest Protestant bequest for such 
a purpose which, up to the date of his death, 
(1691) had ever been made. Not long after that 
event Dean Prideaux, a friend of Boyle and au- 



1 Not Peter Boyle, according to Braur, Beitrage. 1835. S. 57. 



46 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

thor of a well-known work, The Connexion of the 
History of the Old and New Testaments, addressed 
(1695) written proposals to Dr. Tennison, Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, for the promulgation of 
Christianity in the East Indies. While no very 
marked known results may have followed from 
any of the forenamed plans and endeavors, they 
showed that our Saviour's last command was 
pressing more and more upon the attention of 
thoughtful Christian men. 

In the New England colonies there was from 
the first a missionary element. Early emigration 
to our shores proceeded more largely than any 
other similar movement from religious considera- 
tions, and among those was the evangelizing of 
native tribes. Political and social 

„. reasons for the movement were, in- 

Elements. ' 

deed, abundant. Papal exactions and 
persecutions had given place to others little less 
intolerable. Unity of creed and uniformity of 
worship were still stringently enforced. Even 
under Elizabeth worship according to rubric or 
imprisonment for life was the alternative. "I 
will have," said the despicable James I, at the 
Hampton Court Conference, where a calm con- 
sideration of most weighty and most reasonable 
measures might have been expected, " I will have 
one doctrine, one discipline, one religion in sub- 
stance and ceremony. Never speak more to that 
point, how far you are bound to obey." Down 



EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 47 

went the coarse, insolent Bancroft npon his knees. 
"Your Majesty speaks by the special assistance 
of God's Spirit," said he ; "I protest my heart 
melteth for joy that Almighty God, of his singular 
mercy, has given us such a king as since Christ's 
time has not been." In his gushing sycophancy 
the bishop forgot Nero, of the first century, also 
Philip II, who had been in his grave only a quar- 
ter of a century. What man with a spark of 
manliness in him, to say nothing of conscience, 
would not prefer a wilderness and a neighbor- 
hood of savages to a country where royal procla- 
mations had the force of law, where no right of 
independent opinion or utterance could be toler- 
ated, where no privilege of separate worship was 
conceded, where the professed Church of Christ 
countenanced such a son of Belial as Archbishop 
Laud, and civil government sanctioned such a 
demon as Jeffreys? The island had no clergy- 
men of greater worth than the hundreds who 
were driven from pulpit and living by the rigors 
of coercive conformity. For a Nonconformist to 
remain in England meant ruin to him. "Infa- 
mous " is the appropriate running title for many 
chapters in the history of Tudor and Stuart 
dynasties. 

But He who permitted the first ten persecu- 
tions under Roman emperors, permitted ten dec- 
ades of scathing intolerance under British rule ; 
and far-reaching, beneficent results were in the 



48 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

divine mind. But for a tyranny that made Eng- 
land intolerable to the choicest of her citizens, 
North America might have been a Spanish or a 
French domain, and might have been Catholic, as 
is South America. There now appears to have 

been in the purpose of Heaven the 
Desi planting of mighty evangelistic forces 

between the two great oceans. Al- 
ready there have arisen in the United States more 
than thirty (34) foreign missionary societies, 1 not 
including sundry independent movements, which 
now have in their own various fields over three 
thousand (3,011) American laborers and over thir- 
teen thousand (13,335) native assistants. Their 
mission churches number toward three thousand 
(2,909), and their communicants, three hundred 
and eleven thousand two hundred and sixty-three. 
Their schools, five thousand six hundred in num- 
ber, embrace toward one hundred and eighty thou- 
sand (179,087) pupils. Native contributions for 
evangelical work amount to an annual sum of 
about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars 
($443,343), while the home receipts of those so- 
cieties exceed five million of dollars ($5,176,681) 
per annum. 2 Nearly all of these items exceed 
severally one third of corresponding totals in the 



1 Dean Vahl reckons fifty-seven missionary societies in the 
United States, but he includes sundry such that are working 
among the Indians or among our foreign population. 

2 These are proximate statistics for the year 1890-91. 



EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 49 

foreign missionary work of all Protestant Chris- 
tendom at the present date. 

After about twenty years from the landing on 
Plymouth Rock immigration from Old England 
to New England pretty much ceased for a time. 
During that score of years probably not more 
than a tenth as many men, women, and children 
arrived as the present number of communicants 
in our foreign mission churches just named. 

We now turn to some details in the genesis 

and progress of this gratifying development. One 

noteworthy feature of many modern enterprises 

of discovery, colonization, and commerce has been 

an alleged purpose to communicate 

Christianity to heathen and Moham- _, .. 

J Evangelism. 

medan countries. Sheer adventure 
and sheer greed of gold have alike assumed this 
religious disguise. The plea has served to give 
an air of dignity to movements that were purely 
secular, and to secure for them an amount of 
patronage and popularity which would have been 
wanting but for this suborning of conscience. 
Portuguese explorers of the western coast of 
Africa and of the East Indies, in erecting crosses 
on newly discovered lands, not only thought to 
set up proof of the extension of their national 
domain, but at the same time beguiled themselves 
with the idea that they were thus extending the 
earthly dominion of the King of kings. Colum- 
bus, true indeed to one noble purpose, was yet a 



50 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

man of hallucinations. While intensely eager to 
find gold and pearls, he cajoled himself with the 
dream of rescuing Jerusalem from infidels; and 
with the pretense of Christianizing savages he 
exported them into slavery. He and his asso- 
ciates and his successors put forth the same pre- 
text while subjecting Lucayans and other in- 
habitants of the new world to an exterminating 
slavery in their own lands. On the part of early 
Dutch establishments in the Orient there was, 
indeed, less of self-imposition and more of honest 
religious purpose ; yet the Netherlands East India 
and West India Companies were from the first 
supremely intent on the profits, of commerce. 

Far more deeply and consistently honest in 
their evangelistic professions were the great body 
of early immigrants to New England. It would 
indeed be a stretch of charity to suppose that 
the Jameses were particularly thoughtful about 
the conversion of Indians, and it would be the 
height of absurdity to attribute any such serious 
thought to the Charleses. But charters submit- 
ted for their signatures were prepared by men 
and for men, some of whom were swayed by reli- 
gious motives. For example, the instrument which 
Charles I granted to the Massachusetts Colony 
in 1628, provided that the people from England 
"may be so religiously, peaceably, and civilly 
governed as their good life and orderly conver- 
sation may win and incite the natives of the 



EAELY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 51 

country to the knowledge and obedience of the 
only true God and Saviour of mankind and the 
Christian faith, which in our royal intention and 
the adventurers' free profession is the principal 
end of the plantation." The company that was 
organized under this charter speak of the propa- 
gation of the gospel as " the thing they do profess 
above all to be their aim in settling this planta- 
tion." Higginson, who went to Salem, declared, 
"We go to practice the positive part of church 
reformation and propagate the gospel in Amer- 
ica." So, too, the Pilgrims, while in Holland 
and when weighing the matter of emigration to 
America, avowed distinctly a desire not only to 
enlarge the dominions of the English state, but 
the Church of Christ also, if the Lord had a peo- 
ple among the natives whither he would bring 
them. The original seal of the Massachusetts 
Colony embodied the foreign missionary idea, as 
if that were distinctive in their enterprise. It 
represented an Indian uttering the Macedonian 
cry, " Come over and help us." 

Mention has been made of a corporation cre- 
ated by the Long Parliament (1649) for the 
propagation of the gospel in New England. It 
was at the same time directed that notice thereof 
be given from pulpits and that collections in aid 
of the object be taken up. The army made con- 
tributions. No other foreign missionary move- 
ment ever came so near being national in its 



52 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

character. After the Restoration a new charter 
was granted, and Sir Robert Boyle continued 
for thirty years at the head of the corporation. 
The foregoing notices, miscellaneous and not in- 
timately connected with one another, yet serve to 
show that during the seventeenth century there 
were minds in the Church of Eng- 

LP 1 ." 1 an land, and an increasing number of 

Puritan. ' . . „ 

such, to which the evangelization of 

heathen tribes was not wholly foreign, and that 
among Dissenters it ripened into an acknowledged 
duty and a pronounced purpose. Among none of 
them, nor among other Protestants of the period 
elsewhere, was that more distinctly the case than 
on the part of early Pilgrim and Puritan colonists 
in New England. 

Indians attracted the attention of colonists at 
once upon their arrival. Within the limits of 
the New England plantations there were about 
twenty tribes of aboriginal inhabitants, allied, 
however, in language, manners, and religion. It 
is estimated that they numbered 
fifty thousand, of whom not far 
from twelve thousand were in the neighborhood 
of the two colonies along the coast of Massachu- 
setts — "the veriest ruins of mankind on the face 
of the earth," " desolate outcasts," " infinitely 
barbarous ; " so, at least, the fathers pronounced 
them. They were devoid of delicacy in regard 
to food and many other things. Sentiment calls 



EAKLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 53 

the Indian " a child of nature," but surely he has 
an unwise mother. They were often at war with 
one another, were revengeful, exceedingly averse 
to labor — putting all drudgery upon the women, 
who were sometimes more cruel than the men. 
Gambling was their chief amusement, and in that 
they were desperate. They had no poetry, no 
songs, no instrument of music. Their language, 
abounding in consonants, was devoid of euphony, 
as many of the geographical terms now in use 
by us sufficiently show. It belongs to the agglu- 
tinative family, and has words of great length, 
fifteen syllables not being a peculiarity. Here is 
one with forty-three letters — kummogkodonattoot- 
tummooetiteaongannunnonash — and all it means 
is simply u our question." The structural fea- 
tures render it very difficult of acquisition by 
an Englishman. 

In the line of Christian labor among Indians 
the man most widely known, the representative 
missionary of the seventeenth century, was John 
Eliot. He was born in the year 1604, at Wid- 
ford, 1 County of Hertford, about twenty-five miles 
north from London. At the University of Cam- 
bridge he distinguished himself in philology, tak- 
ing his A.B. at Jesus College, 1622. 2 He served 
for a time as usher in the school of Rev. Thomas 
Hooker, so well known afterwards as one of the 



1 Note 7. 

2 Note 8. 



54 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

chief fathers of New England and pastor of the 
first church in the city of Hartford. Having 
been thoroughly converted, without which great 
spiritual change no man should think of entering 
Eliot ^ ne Christian ministry, Eliot made 
in preparation to become a preacher. 

England. g u ^ England was then no place for 
a minister of the gospel who could not in con- 
science conform to an unauthorized hierarchy, 
nor submit, more especially, to the outrageous 
proceedings of Archbishop Laud. Choice lay be- 
tween being whipped, branded, pilloried, having 
the nostrils slit and the ears mutilated, or ex- 
patriation. In the year 1631, and at the age 
of twenty-seven, Eliot arrived in Boston. In the 
absence of Wilson, pastor of the church there, 
he officiated as preacher till his removal the 
next year (October, 1632) to Koxbury, where 
for nearly sixty years he was pastor of the First 
Church. 

Biographical notices of Eliot as a missionary 
usually fail, either through misapprehension or 
careless omission, to bring duly to notice the fact 
of his standing in this intimate re- 
10 s lation to a people who had engaged 
his services before he left England 
and, of course, before they followed him. He 
was never long absent from that people. During 
a considerable part of his fifty-nine years of offi- 
cial relation to them he had no colleague. He 



EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS 55 

served as both pastor and teacher. Personal la- 
bor among the Indians did not begin till fifteen 
years after his settlement at Roxbury. In his 
occasional absences from the pulpit neighboring 
ministers volunteered to supply his place. The 
Roxbury people paid his salary — sixty pounds 
sterling — and his missionary work was carried 
on not only with their knowledge, but, so far as 
appears, with their hearty approval. No evidence 
of dissatisfaction on their part has come down 
to us, and it was particularly creditable to them 
that they were ready to share with rude sons of 
the wilderness the time and strength of their own 
spiritual guide. 

Eliot wisely set himself to the task of master- 
ing the Indian language. It was done in the 
midst of parochial duties. But what a task it 
was ! To what auxiliaries could he turn ? No dic- 
tionary, grammar, analysis, vocabulary, or other 
help was at hand. He took into his Th 

family an Indian, who served the Language, 
purpose not so much of teacher as 
of a mere mouthpiece ; and through the slow 
process of noting word by word as it fell from 
the lips of that untutored man, observing the sig- 
nifications and relative positions, Eliot effected 
an entrance into the strange vernacular. Once 
within that new domain, he found that on the 
score of analogies or of treasure it was as unlike 
those tongues previously known to him as this 



56 PKOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

country, then so rude, was unlike the well-culti- 
vated soil of Old England. From the Atlantic 
to the Pacific was an unbroken wilderness. To 
reach some of the Indian abodes visited by Eliot, 
though at short distances, required as much time 
as is now needed to reach the remotest parts of 
New England. In order to visit, for instance, the 
Nashaway Indians at Lancaster, Eliot was obliged 
to hire a native to break down the bushes before 
him and notch the trees that he might find his 
way to and fro. 

And how far advanced in local cultivation was 
Roxbury itself at the time its pastor gathered 
the first church of converted Indians ? The tract 
lying along what is now known as the beautiful 
street, Walnut Avenue, was called the Fox Holes, 
and a little farther on toward Grove Hall were 
the Bear Marsh and the Wolf Traps, and the town 
was still paying a bounty of ten shillings for every 
wolfs head. Earlier (1655) the bounty had been 
thirty shillings. Eliot, thoroughly imbued with 
the spirit of his office, appreciating chartered dec- 
larations and the possibilities of his position, set 
himself to a systematic preparation for the work. 
He proceeded with much deliberation and not 
without due consultation. "It is hard," he ob- 
served, "to look on the day of small things with 
patience enough." 

And what was it that moved him to his mis- 
sionary service ? What sustained him in the pro- 



EARLY ENGLISH MOVEMENTS. 57 

longed endeavor ? Was it from a clarion call of 
the press or the platform? Were there great 
convocations to welcome and compliment him? 
Were his preaching excursions pleasant vacation 
jaunts? At the time he started on this under- 
taking there was not a Protestant missionary so- 
ciety on the face of the earth. From 
no quarter were pledges of pecun- . 
iary aid tendered. Interest in the 
spiritual welfare of wild aborigines was not all- 
pervading through the community. The town 
records of Roxbury during the first few years of 
its history make mention of sums paid for driv- 
ing away Indians from the neighborhood. Eliot's 
conjecture — one which was entertained by Bou- 
dinot in his Star in the West, and by other writers 
before and since — that our Indian tribes are de- 
scended from the ten tribes of Israel, was a pleas- 
ing but not primary thought with him. Once 
more we inquire, What was the inspiring motive 
with Eliot ? Let him speak for himself : " God 
first put into my heart a compassion for their 
poor souls and a desire to teach them to know 
Christ and to bring them into his kingdom." * 
This recognized father of American missions be- 
gan work at his own charges. Afterwards (1647) 
a gratuity of ten pounds was voted him by the 
Massachusetts court, and later he received a sal- 
ary from the society in England, first of twenty 



Note 9. 



58 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

pounds, which was increased to forty pounds and 
then to fifty pounds. The encouraging sympathy 
shown him afterwards did not greet him at first. 
Even opposition to some extent was encountered. 
The next lecture will resume this sketch of 
John Eliot. 



JOHN ELIOT. 59 



JOHN ELIOT. 



LECTURE IV. — ELIOT, THE APOSTLE OE THE 
INDIANS. 

The last hour that we met was given to 
incipient missionary endeavors of our English 
ancestors in the seventeenth century, and we 
began a study of John Eliot and his labors. 
We resume that study today. We contemplate 
him in his volunteer, extra-parochial undertak- 
ing. It is the year 1646 and the month of 
October. He has mastered the native language 
well enough to speak to the In- 
dians intelligibly on divine things. 
He has already conversed with some of them 
in a way that interests them to have a visit at 
their wigwams. With three English companions 
he goes out to Nonantum, four or five miles 
from his house. He conducts a service or con- 
ference that lasts three hours, the sermon being 
an hour and a quarter in length — the first 
Protestant sermon ever preached in a North 
American language. Prayer he offers in Eng- 
lish, not feeling as yet sufficiently at home in 



60 PBOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

the vernacular of the natives to employ that in 
public ■ devotions. This, not unnaturally, sug- 
gests the thought, on the part of one Indian at 
least, that it was of no use to pray except in 
English, as the Being thus addressed would not 
understand the Indian tongue. 1 Another visit 
was called for and then another, and so on till 
the visits became habitual. The popular im- 
pression is that the climate of New England 
has become milder since the colonial period. 
However that may be, it is recorded that dur- 
ing the winter of 1646 there was no severe 
cold and that no snow fell in Boston and the 
vicinity, nor did any day appointed for visits 
to the Indians prove unfavorable. 2 

It was evident from the first, and increas- 
ingly evident as time advanced, that truth took 
effect upon the native mind ; that there was a 
sense of guilt and a deepening felt need of 
pardon, and thus preparation to accept the dis- 
closures of grace through Jesus Christ. Ques- 
tions — some of them not easily answered — 
were asked by the Indians which showed that 
serious thought was aroused arid that an effect- 
ive leaven had begun to work. Interest on the 
part of these Indians and others elsewhere was 
not, indeed, universal. Some of the sagamores 
and conjurers vehemently opposed our evan- 



1 Note 10. 

2 Ellis' History of Roxbury, p. 76. 



JOHN ELIOT. 61 

gelist. Philip, the Narraganset sachem, once 
treated Eliot with scorn, taking hold of his 
button and saying that he cared no more for 
the gospel than for that button. But at 
Nonantum a desire for social improvement 
manifested itself. Better clothing and some 
implements of industry were called for; chil- 
dren were presented for instruction ; the Sab- 
bath began to be recognized and observed; 
family worship was instituted. It appears that 
for a long time Eliot made fortnightly tours, 
preaching and catechising the children; then he 
would alternate, holding a service one week in 
the cabin of Waban, a headman at Nonantum, 
and the next week in the cabin of Cutshamakin, 
a sachem at Neponset, Dorchester. His visits 
were extended to natives within the limits of 
what is now Worcester County and Plymouth 
County, Massachusetts, and to the northeastern 
corner of Connecticut. 

At length the Indians became desirous of 
better habitations, better organized social life, 
and something like a municipal government. 
Under Eliot's leadership they were 
provided with a place of settle- Civilization 

x ■*■ Developing. 

ment at Natick, eighteen miles 
from Boston — judiciously farther from English 
neighbors than Nonantum. He drafted a con- 
stitution for them, based upon the Mosaic civil 
polity, and the community made progress in 



62 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

self-government, as evinced by wholesome legis- 
lation and a good degree of executive fidelity. 
They began to till the ground; they built 
houses instead of wigwams; they put up one 
building fifty feet long by twenty-five in width, 
which was to be town property, designed for a 
school and a place of worship, while the upper 
room served for storage and a place for Eliot's 
bed. This settlement was on both sides of 
Charles River, over which they constructed a 
footbridge, eighty feet long and in the middle 
nine feet high. In starting such more compli- 
cated and extensive works, aid from an English 
carpenter was needed for a day or two ; but 
the natives showed aptitude, and their opera- 
tions were notable achievements for men re- 
cently so torpid and to whom labor had been 
so distasteful. These industries Eliot regarded 
as needful results and helpful accompaniments 
of the new religious life that was awakened. 
He did not see, as Carne remarks, 1 that they 
must be civilized ere they could be Christian- 
ized. The best kind of help to be encouraged 
everywhere on missionary ground is self-help. 

Of Eliot's published writings not missionary 
in their character I say nothing, except that 
they were not of eminent value. His pro- 
ductions that relate to the Indians deserve 
special notice. These consist of a primer and 

1 Lives of Eminent Missionaries, I, p. 12. 



JOHN ELIOT. 63 

a grammar auxiliary to acquiring the language. 
He also made contributions of Christian liter- 
ature to the native language, such as a cate- 
chism, or rather catechisms, and 

the Psalms of David in meter, - 1 J rary 

' Labors. 

besides a translation of two works 
by Thomas Shepard, of Cambridge, The Sincere 
Convert and The Sound Believer, Baxter's Call 
to the Unconverted, and The Practice of Piety 
(1686), written by Lewis Bayly, 1 a book which 
a century since (1792) had reached the seventy- 
first edition. 

But Eliot's great literary work was the 
translation of our sacred Scriptures — a truly 
missionary Bible — and a great work it was 
indeed, "which," he well remarks, "I look at 
as a sacred and holy work, and to be regarded 
with much fear and reverence." Viewed in 
the light of all the circumstances, it must be 
pronounced a unique, if not an un- 
paralleled, achievement. Eliot en- ^ \ e . 
L ' Translation. 

tertained true Protestant ideas re- 
garding the authority and value of God's Word 
and the right of every people under heaven to 
have this richest of treasures in their own 
mother tongue and in their own hands. He 
knew, as we know, that the history of gospel 
propagation and of revived Christian life is, in 



1 Came credits the work mistakenly to Baxter. Lives, I, p. 45. 



64 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

a marked degree, the history of Bible transla- 
tion and circulation. Where has there ever 
been a spiritual movement, healthful and de- 
cided, that did not stand connected with 
efforts to give currency to the Word of God? 
Withhold or withdraw that Word and true 
religion declines till it becomes extinct. The 
populous islands of Japan and extensive por- 
tions of South America were once nominally 
Christian, but the Holy Scriptures were not 
given to the people, and the light that seemed 
to be kindled went out. This inspired, this 
infallible, record of religious truth must be 
accessible, or no adequately aggressive power, 
no self-perpetuating vitality, will exist. Eliot 
appreciated the necessities of the case and set 
himself to the needful task. He was a man of 
prayer, and acted on his own maxim as thus 
laid down, "When we would accomplish any 
great things, the best policy is to work by an 
engine that the world knows nothing of." 

Think of the comparative difficulties which 
surrounded him. Glance for a moment at sim- 
ilar undertakings before this. Go back to a 
period anterior to Christ's coming. 

m ar " Examine the Septuagint, executed 
rassments. ■, 

by numerous colaborers at the re- 
quest of Ptolemy and under his royal patron- 
age; but it was the Old Testament alone and 
translated into the Greek, a language then 



JOHN ELIOT. 65 

prevalent in the civilized world. Look at the 
twenty years' labor of Jerome, late in the 
fourth century of our era, with much-needed 
assistance, amidst his scholarly retirement at 
Bethlehem ; yet he rendered Holy Scripture 
into the tongue then most widely diffused, and 
thus the Vulgate came into being. It was into 
his vernacular and with many auxiliaries that 
the venerable Bede, in the eighth century, 
translated a part of the Holy Scriptures. To 
Peter Waldo, Europe, at the close of the 
twelfth century, owed the earliest translation 
into a modern language of some portions of 
these sacred writings ; but Waldo was a man 
of wealth, who could command his time and 
with little effort render the Latin into his 
mother tongue, the French. When Luther 
finished his version — that, too, into the lan- 
guage his fathers and his countrymen spoke — 
he had Melanchthon, one of the ripest scholars 
of the age, to assist in its revision. At his 
side was Cruciger with Hebrew and Chaldee 
in hand, Bugenhagen or Pomeranius with the 
Vulgate, and Justus Jonas lending the aid of 
his acquaintance with rabbinic lore. Each 
gave his opinion on the passages examined, 
and Master George Borer kept the record. 

But here is John Eliot, amidst primeval 
forests and all the privations and solicitudes 
of early colonial life, with parochial labors 



66 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

quite sufficient, slightly cheered by social aid, 
mastering the language of a barbarous people 
that did not possess a vestige of literature, 
even to the amount of an uncouth song. 1 Into 
that vehicle, not of thought so much as of sav- 
age wants, he transfuses the wealth of God's 
Word. Almost no assistance was at hand. 
The entire translation, says Cotton Mather, 
was executed with a single pen. It appeared 
only thirty-five years after the version of King 
James in English, the one now so widely read. 
The New Testament was published in Septem- 
ber, 1661, soon after the restoration of Charles 
the Second. The Old Testament followed in 
1663. The corporation in England, which has 
been mentioned, sent from that country press 
and types and the needed materials for print- 
ing. Copies became at length very scarce, 
many having been burned or otherwise de- 
stroyed in the Indian wars. A second edition 
of the New Testament in 1680 and of the Old 
Testament in 1685 were printed at Cambridge. 
The work is at present extremely rare, and 
a perfect sample will command an extremely 



1 It differed so much from other Indian tongues that this 
translation could not be useful to tribes outside of Massachu- 
setts. Hook, in his Ecclesiastical Biography, IV, p. 564, makes 
mistake as follows, Eliot " translated the Bible into the language 
of the Six Nations." Steel, in Doing Good, p. 86, remarks, Eliot 
"translated the Scriptures into the Choctaw language." 



JOHK ELIOT. 67 

high price — a thousand dollars and upwards. 
Only one man now living can read the book. 1 

Rare perseverance did Eliot exhibit. Dur- 
ing the first thousand years of our era the 
Bible was translated into only ten different 
languages, the rate being one for every cen- 
tury; yet none of them, nor any one of the 
more than three hundred versions 
since made into different tongues, A ,_. eer esJ \ 

° ' Achievement. 

furnishes probably so much to ad- 
mire in the faith and industry of one man tri- 
umphing over difficulties. At present there are 
between forty and fifty versions in the vernac- 
ulars of America. What two hundred years 
ago must have been — what must now be — the 
holy satisfaction of John Eliot in the remem- 
brance of his devout studies and quickened 
graces while thus engaged, and knowing that 
he has been the instrument in God's provi- 
dence of presenting to aboriginal inhabitants 
of New England the first Bible ever printed 
on our continent, the first translation of that 
volume in this hemisphere since holy men of 
God began to speak as they were moved by 
the Holy Ghost — indeed, the first instance in 
which the entire Bible was ever given to a 
barbarous people as a means of their conver- 
sion! Columbus made known to the old world 
the greatest of geographical discoveries ; to the 



1 J. Hammond Trumbull, LL.D., L.H.D. 



08 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

new world Eliot gave the greatest of treasures 
possessed by the old. His preaching and trans- 
lations were blessed. Conversions took place. 
Indubitable tokens of religious sensibility and 
of changed habits appeared, a signal triumph of 
truth and grace over stolid men of the woods. 
Expressions like the following were employed 
in their prayers : " Take away, Lord, my stony 
heart ; " " Wash, Lord, my soul ; " " Lord, lead 
me when I die to heaven." Eliot states that 
these were not learned by rote, for he had 
never used them in his prayers at their meet- 
ings. Cotton Mather, speaking of a visit paid 
by him and others to one of the 
u° a bt d towns of " praying Indians," so- 
called, observes : " To see and 
hear Indians opening their mouths and lifting 
up their hands and eyes in prayer to the living 
God, calling on him by his name Jehovah in 
the mediation of Jesus Christ, and this for a 
good while together ; to see and hear them ex- 
horting one another from the Word of God; 
to see and hear them confessing the name of 
Christ Jesus and their own sinfulness — sure 
this is more than usual ! And though they 
spoke in a language of which many of us un- 
derstood but little, yet we that were present 
that day saw and heard them perform the 
duties mentioned with such grave and sober 
countenances, with such comely reverence in 



JOHN ELIOT. 69 

their gesture and their whole carriage, and 
with such plenty of tears trickling down the 
cheeks of some of them, as did argue to us 
that they spake with the holy fear of God, and 
it much affected our hearts." 1 

Eliot used great caution — a caution probably 
beyond what was called for — before organizing 
converts into a church. Six or eight years at 
least he had a class of catechumens who gave 
gratifying evidence of a change of heart, but it 
was not till 1660 that the first Indian church 
was constituted. Could there be a greater con- 
trast than between such thorough proceedings 
and the superficial evangelization and hasty 
baptisms of the Dutch in their seventeenth 
century operations among natives of the great 
Asiatic archipelago? 

In order to form some suitable estimate of 
the results of Eliot's missionary labor it will 
be helpful if we take our station for a moment 
at the date of 1670, a little more than midway 
in his apostleship, when he has been thus en- 
gaged for a quarter of a century. The colonial 
settlements have as yet made no very great ad- 
vance. In all New England only about forty 
churches can be found. No town except Boston 
has more than one church. The first printing 
press is just being introduced into that place, 
and it will be fifty years before one sees a 



1 Mather's Magnolia, Vol. I, p. 513. 



70 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

market cart with vegetables driving into town. 
It is not easy to conceive how rudely primitive 
was the condition of this capital of New Eng- 
land, now embracing a population of about four 
hundred and fifty thousand. Writers, more 
especially European writers, seem to have no 
proper idea of the state of things at the be- 
ginning of that settlement. Miss Charlotte M. 
Yonge, for example, a well-known living author, 
in her sketch of Eliot, says, "They 
^ u ts ° landed at Boston, then newly ris- 
ing into a city over its harbor." 1 
Boston was not incorporated as a city till 
nearly two centuries after that (1822). Wolves 
infested its neighborhood on the south. 2 The 
first meeting house in Roxbury was a mere 
thatched building; yet at the date which has 
been named (1670) there are one thousand and 
one hundred nominally Christian natives under 
the care of Eliot. In the church at Natick 
will be found between forty and fifty commu- 
nicants. Within the limits of the two col- 
onies, Massachusetts and Plymouth, six native 
churches have come into existence. There are 
seven old towns of "praying Indians," and 
more remotely in the Nipmuck country seven 
new " praying towns ; " while the proportion 
of natives who can read and write equals that 



1 Pioneers and Founders, p. 4. 

2 Note 11. 



JOHN ELIOT. 71 

of the Russian Empire today. Several Indians 
had joined the church in Roxbury. The Indian 
churches were all well furnished with religious 
officers except the one at Natick, where, as 
Eliot reports, "In modesty they stood off, be- 
cause so long as I live they say there is no 
need." 1 No missionary to North American In- 
dians was ever more successful than he. The 
venerable man lived to see twenty-four native 
preachers raised up, some of them through his 
own instrumentality. He had the sagacity to 
observe — what some modern missionaries seem 
slow to apprehend — "that God is wont ordina- 
rily to convert nations and peoples by some of 
their own countrymen, who are nearest to them 
and can best speak and most of all pity their 
brethren and countrymen." How stands the 
case now, after the lapse of two hundred years? 
Our general government has come into rela- 
tions with scores, indeed hundreds, of tribes, 
and missionary societies have sent numerous 
laborers among them. Yet at this moment, 
on all of their extensive reservations, are there 
more ordained native men than Eliot could 
name two hundred years ago in Massachusetts 
alone? One sentence of his I commend to 
you as a pocket-piece — as a stimulating senti- 
ment for all days before you. It occurs at the 



1 Letter to Increase Mather, August 22, 1673. 



72 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

close of his Indian grammar, 1 "Prayer and 
pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do 
anything." 

Eliot was not, as before remarked, cheered 
by universal approbation, nor did he seek pe- 
cuniary returns to himself. His stipend was 
much the same as that of the Apostle Paul 
— obloquy and hardships. 2 From his own 
countrymen he sometimes encountered suspi- 
cion, censure, and varied unkind- 
Personal O -II J 1' £ 

_, . , ness. borne blamed him tor re- 

Tnals. 

ducing the trade in peltries by 
encouragement given to settled life and to 
agriculture instead of the chase. There were 
those in Old England as well as New England 
who impeached his motives and pronounced 
his work a failure, just as is now done by 
men skeptical regarding evangelistic operations 
among the heathen. But he endured hardness 
as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Listen to 
one of his memorandums : " It pleased God to 
exercise us with such tedious rain and bad 



1 The Indian Grammar Begun ; or, An Essay to Bring the Indian 
Language into Rules. Cambridge, 1666. 

2 A letter written by Eliot in 1673 answered inquiries, one of 
which ran thus : "What encouragement is there as to outward 
matters for any of the natives of England or Scotland to under- 
take the work of the ministry among them by devoting himself 
wholly or mainly thereunto 1 " Answer : " Nothing but poverty 
and hardships unsupportable in a constant way by our clothed 
and housed nations/' 



JOHN ELIOT. 73 

weather that we were extreme wet, insomuch 
that I was not dry from the third day of the 
week to the sixth, but so traveled, and at night 
pull off my boots, wring my stockings, and on 
with them again." 

Nor was he wholly exempt from danger 
among the Indians, especially when there were 
feuds between different tribes. In some in- 
stances the sachems and powwows, apprehensive 
lest their authority should be undermined by 
the new religion, would threaten him if he did 
not desist from his operations. But he replied : 
"I am about the work of the great God, and 
my God is with me, so that I neither fear you 
nor all the sachems in the country. I will 
go on. Do you touch me if you dare ! " His 
record might well be : " In journeyings oft ; in 
perils of water ; in perils by the heathen ; 
in perils in the wilderness ; " but exempt from 
one form of perils that Paul met with — those 
of the city, for there was no city on the con- 
tinent nearer than St. Augustine in Florida. 

The severest trial, however, was the reverses 
and partial deterioration experienced at the 
native settlements and by other Indians for 
whom he had labored. In spite of prohibitory 
laws, ardent spirits were sold to them by the 
whites; and intemperance proved, as it has 
ever since and everywhere proved among the 
aborigines, exceedingly demoralizing and de- 



74 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

structive. Eliot's chief disappointment resulted 
from the war with Philip, the powerful Nar- 
raganset sachem. The towns of " praying 
Indians" were, to a great extent, broken up, 
for they fell under the suspicion of English 
settlers. Such alarm and exasperation reigned 
among the exposed colonists that our apostle 
could only with much difficulty secure a hear- 
ing for the claims of humanity and Christian 
brotherhood. The strong native 
instincts and tribal sympathies of 
a few among those who had enjoyed the ben- 
efits of colonial philanthropy led them to join 
their savage countrymen in marauding expedi- 
tions. 1 Christian Indians, especially within the 
Massachusetts Colony, lost alike the confidence 
of their uncivilized fellows and of their white 
neighbors. Some of the settlements, however, 
remained without exception friendly and loyal 
to their benefactors throughout those contests. 

It was not at all strange — though at this 
distance sad, indeed, to contemplate — that ter- 
ror should overpower all better feelings on the 
part of English settlers and lead to unchristian 
retaliation. One company of Indians, semi-civ- 



1 Among those who refused to join the Pequots when they 
sought to enlist him against the English was John Thomas, 
who was one of the earliest of the "praying Indians" and who 
joined the church when it was first gathered by Eliot. He died 
at Natick, 1727, aged 110 years. 



JOHN ELIOT. 75 

ilized at least, was conducted to an island in 
Boston Harbor, bound together somewhat as 
Mohammedan slave-drivers now treat their cap- 
tives in Africa. Some, captured in war, were 
sold into West Indian slavery — a monstrous 
proceeding, yet it was only in accord with the 
sentiment and usage of the mother country. 
At that very period men were transported 
from England to Barbadoes, and women to 
Jamaica, and sold there as slaves to the col- 
onists for a longer or shorter time. 1 Two 
hundred and fifty of the Covenanters cap- 
tured at Bothwell Bridge were shipped as 
slaves to Barbadoes. 2 

Provocation was extreme. Indians once 
started upon the warpath, their ravages were 
widespread and merciless. No apology what- 
ever can be offered for them. Lands occupied 
by the early settlers were bought and on terms 
satisfactory to aboriginal claimants. Legislation 
in their behalf had been eminently humane and 
wise. Wrongs, so far as committed by white 
neighbors, were the work of such unthinking 
or unprincipled men as are never wanting in 
any community, young or old. The wild In- 
dians, distinguished from those reclaimed, did 



1 Dictionary of Sects, etc. By the Kev. John Henry Blunt, 
M.A., F.S.A. London, 1874. P. 465. 

2 Scotland's Free Church. By George Buchanan Eiley and 
John M. McCandlish, F.R.S.E. London, 1893. P. 175. 



76 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

not appreciate the kindness generally felt and 
the justice shown them, nor did they appreci- 
ate the benefits of civilized life. Race hatred 
and race fear dominated the reckless sav- 
ages. There was no peace and no safety 
for the newcomers, especially in outlying dis- 
tricts. The farmer and the traveler were liable 
at any hour of the day to be shot by an 
enemy in ambush. Women and children at 
the door might be scalped or hurried into cap- 
tivity. In the two older and principal colonies 
there were less than ninety towns; of these, 
at least ten were entirely destroyed and forty 
more were injured by fire. About two thirds 
of them had personal experience of the terrors 
incident to a frontier inadequately protected, 
and harassed by stealthy, unscrupulous ene- 
mies who were bent on exterminating all white 
settlements. Men of military age were literally 
decimated by murder or in battle, or as pris- 
oners undergoing tortures the very thought of 
which, even at this distance of time, makes 
us shudder. Only a few English families in 
the Massachusetts and Plymouth Colonies were 
not in mourning. 1 Whatever may be true of 
later treatment of Indian tribes within our 
national limits, and whatever the responsibility 
of white encroachment for Indian hostilities, 



Palfrey's History of New England, III, p. 215. 



JOHN ELIOT. 77 

neither equity nor sentiment can reasonably 
apologize for these earlier onsets of hostile 
natives. Our fathers aimed at self-preserva- 
tion; they had a right to do all that self-pres- 
ervation required, and as war goes they were 
justified in their proceedings. The after dis- 
tribution of captives into slavery is, indeed, 
to be most emphatically reprehended. Against 
that proceeding our apostle issued a public pro- 
test. 1 He declares, " Christ has said, ' Blessed 
are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. ' ' 
In the course of the same extended petition 
occurs the following : " When we came we de- 
clared to the world, and it is recorded — yea 
we are instructed by our letters patent from 
the king's majesty — that the endeavor of the 
Indians' conversion, not their extirpation, was 
one great end of our enterprise in coming to 
these ends of the earth." John Robinson's oft- 
quoted exclamation, "O, that you had converted 
some before you had killed any ! " was uncalled 
for. Dr. Warneck, candid and usually accu- 
rate, writes, " Although these emigrants ex- 
pressly proposed to themselves the extension 
of the kingdom of God among the heathen, 
yet Indian wars preceded by a long time In- 



x "To the Honorable the Governor and Council, sitting at 
Boston the 13th of the sixth, 1675, the humble petition of 
John Eliot showeth." 



78 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

dian missions." 1 Just the reverse of that is 
true. He was misled by Fritschel, 2 who at 
times is neither candid nor accurate. 

From the disasters of that period the settle- 
ments of Christian Indians never recovered. 
Removal and decay went on till now for a 
long time neither cabin nor wigwam has been 
seen anywhere on the field of Eliot's chief 
missionary toil. Visiting the village of South 
Natick, you will find one humble 

Decadence. , , . , , „ 

gravestone bearing the name ot 
Tackawompbait, 3 a teacher, at whose ordina- 
tion our Eliot assisted and whose interment 
took place in 1716. The rude block has been 
built into a wall that runs across his grave 
by the public roadside. Its position and treat- 
ment are an emblem of the race, prostrate or 
vanished. 

But "what then," inquires Dr. Geekie, 4 
"what then remains of all this marvelous toil 
and industry?" We answer, what Augustine 
was to the Angles of Britain, John Eliot, a 
man far superior to him, became to Indians in 
New England. Rightly viewed he was one 



1 Outline of the History of Protestant Missions. Smith's trans- 
lation. P. 35. 

2 Geschichte der christlichen Missionen unter den Indianern 
Nor darner ihas. 

3 Note 12. 

4 Christian Missions to Wrong Places, among Wrong Races, in 
Wrong Hands. By A. C. Geekie, D.D. London, 1871. P. 5. 



JOHN ELIOT. 79 

of the few men of an age or of a country. 
Though acceptable as a preacher and pastor 
among his countrymen, he chose to forego, in 
large measure, the gratifications of popularity, 
to surrender the comparative comforts of ex- 
clusive home work, and for more than twoscore 
years to spend many a day — yes, and occasion- 
ally a night too 1 — in toilsome efforts to win 
those men of the forest to Christ and to civil- 
ization. Not a whit was this apostle to the 
Indians behind the chiefest of modern apostles. 
From Roxbury round about unto Illyricum he 
fully preached the gospel, and 
scores 01 dark-minded warriors be- 
came divinely enlightened. In the habitation 
of dragons where each lay there came to be 
grass, with reeds and rushes. The wilderness 
and solitary place were glad for him; the 
desert rejoiced and blossomed as the rose. 

Cheerfulness, temperance, early rising, and 
hard work — for each of which Eliot was noted 
— favor longevity. At the age of eighty-six 
years, on the 20th of May, 1690, Eliot entered 
into rest, the last words which he uttered 
being, "Welcome joy!" 2 Twenty years before 
that Baxter wrote him : " There is no man on 
earth whose work I think more honorable and 
comfortable than yours. The industry of the 



1 Note 13. 

2 Note 14. 



80 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

Jesuits and friars and their successes in Congo, 
Japan, China, etc., shame us all save you." 
After Eliot's decease Baxter, on his own death- 
bed, writes : " There was no man on earth 
whom I honored above him. I am now dying 
— I hope as he did." The celebrated John 
Owen expressed much interest in the labors 
and character of Eliot. 

"All this vast labor," remarks Dr. Geekie 
once more, u has proved a work for one day, 
not for all time." Is it only of transient 
moment that hundreds of human beings, ig- 
norant, debased, yet bearing the stamp of 
immortality, have the good news of salva- 
tion brought to them, receive the truth in 
faith and love, and become heirs to an in- 
heritance incorruptible, undefiled, all glorious, 
and endless? And, further, was 
_> t m , the influence of Eliot and his 

Perpetuated. 

coadjutors circumscribed geograph- 
ically and to that age? A refluent wave of 
missionary interest reached the mother country. 
His own writings and the writings of others 
made known there the nature and prospects 
of his work. English and Scottish societies 
for propagating the gospel in foreign parts 
sprang up, partly at least, as a result. By 
blessed contagion that interest spread, and in 
some measure was perpetuated. Good men 
in Holland, too, were moved by the good 



JOHN ELIOT. 81 

news. Increase Mather, writing (1687) to 
Leusden, professor of Hebrew in the University 
of Utrecht, states that Eliot, though eighty- 
three years old, still preached to the Indians 
as often as once in two months. The note- 
worthy rise of foreign missionary zeal within 
the last hundred years is an outgrowth, in no 
small measure, of what was done for the pagan 
people of Massachusetts by Eliot and his co- 
laborers and immediate successors. The Amer- 
ican Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- 
sions, which has sent out more than two thou- 
sand missionaries, is a century plant, whose 
seed was dropped by the apostle to the Indians 
among the hills of Natick. One reason why 
God so blessed our fathers was that they, the 
hostages of Providence, were true to Christ's 
commission and were teachers and leaders of 
a militant host in modern Protestant missions. 
The church that is not missionary in its spirit 
must repent or wane ; the pastor who is not 
should reform or resign. 



82 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 



AMONG INDIANS. 



LECTURE V. — COLONIAL ENDEAVORS. 

The last lecture was on John Eliot, the 
most eminent missionary of the seventeenth 
century. No further sketch of evangelistic 
labor in behalf of aborigines during the sev- 
enteenth century can be expected to have 
equal interest. It would not, however, be 
just to his contemporaries and successors, nor 
just to that period nor to the century fol- 
lowing, if we pass by certain other of the 
earlier endeavors to Christianize Indian tribes. 
But it might seem wearisome to listen to de- 
tails in this department which are not intrin- 
sically of high importance, and the interest 
in which is due largely to local associations. 
I propose, therefore, at this time not so much 
a lecture as a glance at some of the salient 
facts, indeed simply notes, which can easily 
be expanded at your option. Following a 
geographical order we will only outline the 
subject. 



AMONG INDIANS. 83 

No family in colonial times or subsequently 
in the United States lias such a noteworthy 
record in the line of missionary labor as that 
of the Mayhews on Martha's Vineyard. That 
island, called by the natives Nope, twenty 
miles in length and three to nine miles in 
width, together with neighboring islands — Nan- 
tucket and the sixteen Elizabeth Islands — 
was secured from the agent of 
Lord Sterling^ by Thomas May- ° u e .f s e ™ 

& J J Massachusetts. 

hew, who had been a merchant 
in Southampton, England, and who came to 
New England before 1636. This grant was 
made in 1641. Those islands were under the 
jurisdiction of New York till 1692, when they 
were annexed to Massachusetts. 

In 1642 Mayhew began a settlement at 
Edgartown, towards eighty miles southeast 
from Boston, and he became governor of the 
domain which had been ceded to him. He 
strongly attached the Indians to himself. 
After the death of his son Thomas — it be- 
ing impossible to obtain a stated minister for 
the Indians — he began himself, having ac- 
quired their language, to preach to them 
and to the English, his age being three- 
score and ten. It was a noteworthy sight to 
see a governor, and especially at such an 
age, walking sometimes nearly twenty miles 
through the woods to preach. 



84 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

He induced the Gay Head Indians at the 
farther end of Martha's Vineyard to receive 
the gospel. Gay Head is a remarkable prom- 
ontory rising over a hundred and seventy feet 
above the sea at the southwest extremity of 
the island. In 1675, during King Philip's War, 
the Indians in that region, being twenty times 
more numerous than the English, would, in all 
probability, have exterminated their neighbors 
but for the influence of Governor Mayhew and 
of the gospel which they had been taught. 
Early New England history furnishes no otjier 
instance of such prolonged happy relations be- 
tween colonists and aborigines. 

In 1670, though fully fourscore years of age, 
he was asked to become pastor of the first 
native church, but declined the invitation. He 
lived to be ninety-two, laboring to the very 
last, and dying in 1681. 

Thomas Mayhew, the only son of Governor 

Thomas, was the first minister on Martha's 

Vineyard. Accompanying his father, in 1642, 

he began labor there by preach- 

Five Mayhews. . . & , . „ ^ .. ^ r . 

mg to the lew English who es- 
tablished a settlement; but he became inter- 
ested in the surrounding natives, studied their 
language, and won their confidence. He might 
be seen in their smoky wigwams devoting a 
part of the night to rehearsing Scripture truths 
to them. Such was the attachment of the na- 



AMONG INDIANS. 85 

tives to him that the mention of his name 
would for years afterwards call forth tears. 
When he left them to embark for England 
the place on the wayside where he took 
leave was for that generation remembered with 
sorrow. According to Indian usage a pile of 
stones marked the spot, which is still pointed 
out. Thus the scene at Miletus was reen- 
acted there. 

In 1643 Hiacoomes was recognized as the 
first convert. Mr. Mayhew began his public 
and volunteer work among the Indians three 
years later (1646), the same year that Eliot 
started out on his first formal preaching tour. 
He took up residence at Edgartown as pas- 
tor of the English settlement there, and also 
began efforts in behalf of neighboring Indians. 
Four years had hardly gone by when (1650) 
one hundred of those red men entered into 
a covenant that they would obey God, im- 
ploring mercy through Christ Jesus. In the 
course of his twelve years of earnest labor 
"many hundred men and women were added 
to the church," says Cotton Mather. Chiefly 
with a view to secure aid for them he sailed 
for England (November, 1657) ; but the vessel 
and all on board were lost at sea. With 
him perished one of his native preachers, who 
had graduated from Harvard College. Thomas 
Mayhew, a man of much promise — a man 



86 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

who, indeed, had largely fulfilled his prom- 
ise — was removed at the age of thirty-six. 1 
As before intimated the aged father took up 
the work of the son after his removal, and 
continued the same during the remainder of 
a life unusually prolonged. 

John Mayhew, a son of Thomas junior, was 
born 1652, and at the age of twenty-one be- 
came minister to the English colonists at Tis- 
bury, which adjoins Edgartown on Martha's 
Vineyard. About the same time he began to 
preach to the Indians. He taught alternately 
in their assemblies every week, receiving only 
five pounds per annum, till two years before 
his death, which occurred 1689, at the same 
age with his father, who at thirty-six slept be- 
neath the sea. 

Experience Mayhew, son of John and great- 
grandson of the first governor, was born Jan- 
uary 27, 1673. He spoke Indian from early 
childhood, and began at the same age as his 
father, twenty-one, to preach to the red men, 
and had the oversight of half a dozen assem- 
blies. He was employed by the Society for 
Propagating the Gospel in New England, and 
prepared a new version of the Psalms as well 



*The Rev. Thomas Mayhew married his stepsister, the 
daughter of Mrs. Paine, a widow lady who became the second 
wife of the governor. 



AMONG INDIANS. 87 

as of the Gospel of John (1709). In 1727 
appeared his valuable book, entitled Indian 
Converts. Other writings were also published. 
His death took place November 29, 1758, at 
the age of eighty-five. 1 

Zechariah Mayhew, son of Experience, re- 
ceived ordination at Martha's Vineyard De- 
cember 10, 1767. In the employ of the fore- 
named society he devoted his life to the 
Indians, and died March 6, 1806, aged eighty- 
nine. 2 

Thus for five generations members of this 
family labored in behalf of the Indians (from 
1646 to 1806), a period of one hundred and 
sixty years. The only parallel instance in 
missionary annals is that of the Moravian, 
Frederick Bonisch — who married Anna Stach, 
1740 — and his descendants, who also during 
five generations continued in the good work 
for one hundred and forty years. The last 
one in that line died a few years since. One 
other Moravian family, by the name of Bach, 
performed missionary service in Greenland dur- 
ing one hundred and ten consecutive years. 

Others of the Mayhew family, besides the 
five who have been named, manifested an in- 
terest in the religious welfare of the aborig- 



1 Note 15. 

2 Regarding his age authorities differ. 



88 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

ines. One of them was Matthew, a son of 
Thomas junior, who, in 1681, succeeded his 
grandfather as governor and who also preached 
to the Indians. 

Longevity among the Mavhews will be no- 
ticed. Thomas, who heads the list, governor 
and patentee, attained to ninety-two; Expe- 
rience, his great-grandson, to eighty-five; and 
Zechariah, a son of Experience, to eighty-nine. 
The sixty-four years of Experience Mayhew's 
missionary service exceeds even the Moravian 
Zeisberger's term, which was sixty-two years, 
and exceeds that of any other American en- 
gaged in similar work. 1 

Evangelistic success among the Indians of 
Martha's Vineyard was, on the whole, not 
less than anywhere else in the country. 
Whatever the cause, insular missions have 
generally been more successful than those 
upon the continents. This was begun a 
little earlier (1644 or 1645) than Eliot's work 
at Nonantum (1646), and after five or six 
years nearly two hundred men, women, and 
children professed the Christian religion 2 and 
attended upon the religious instruction of 
Thomas Mayhew. 



1 The statement regarding Zeisberger, on page 305 of Mora- 
vian Missions, needs correction. 

2 Note 16. 



AMONG INDIANS. 89 

A dozen years later (1662) there were two 
hundred and eighty-two, including eight pow- 
wows, who had embraced Christianity. At 
the death of John May hew (1689) there was 
a church of one hundred members, 
containing several well-instructed 
native teachers. In process of time the en- 
tire island became Christian, nominally at 
least, and adopted the usages of civilized 
life in the matter of husbandry and other 
concerns. The first of their churches was 
constituted in 16T0 (August 22), John Eliot 
being present to assist. Thence onward order 
and discipline were fairly well maintained. 1 
The original population continued to dimin- 
ish. 2 In 1720 there were but eight hundred 
souls, distributed in six small villages, each of 
which was supplied with an Indian preacher. 3 

The name of the first convert, Hiacoomes, 
has been mentioned. After receiving instruc- 
tion from Mr. Mayhew he began to instruct 
his neighbors, somewhat privately and quietly, 
till at length Tawanquatuck, a prominent sa- 
chem, invited Mr. Mayhew and Hiacoomes to 



1 Note 17. 

2 Cotton Mather estimates the number of adults on Martha's 
Vineyard and Nantucket at about three thousand, which, like 
most of the early estimates of the original population of the 
country, was probably in excess of facts. 

3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc. I, 206. 



90 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

preach to him and as many others as would 
attend. From that time this earliest of such 
converts in New England was recognized as 
a public religious teacher. He became the first 
native pastor of a church, and was for a 
time an object of hatred to the powwows, 
who threatened his life ; but he exhibited a 
true courage, resulting from faith in God. A 
haughty sagamore, Pahkehpunuasso by name, re- 
viled him for conforming to the English in 
things civil and religious. Hiacoomes replied 
that this was not to the disadvantage of the 
Indians, whereupon the sagamore dealt him a 
heavy blow in the face. The Christian man 
meekly replied, " I have one hand for injuries 
and another hand for God; while I receive 
wrong with the one I lay the faster hold 
on God with the other." Hiacoomes lived to 
a great age. The life of Tawanquatuck was 
also threatened on account of his renouncing 
heathenism. 

The Mayhews, especially in the earlier pe- 
riod of their missionary work, appear to have 
been not less cautious than John Eliot in 
their estimates of Christian character. A long 
time elapsed before a separate Indian church 
was organized. Not only did Hiacoomes, the 
first pastor, maintain a consistent Christian and 
official walk, but other preachers also. Expe- 
rience Mayhew in his work entitled Indian 



AMONG INDIANS. 91 

Converts, a handsome volume of three hun- 
dred pages, printed in London, 1727, enumer- 
ates twenty-two " godly Indian ministers," whom 
he portrays. Then follow sketches of "twenty 
other good Indian men," "thirty religious In- 
dian women," and "twenty-two pious Indian 
young persons." These ninety-four narratives 
are followed fey supplementary briefer notices 
of seventeen other Indian men and nine other 
Indian women. The sixscore converts thus 
singled out for particular mention are only 
such as seemed to be specially worthy of a 
published narrative. Mayhew was scrupulously 
accurate, and his reliability is attested by 
eleven ministers of Boston. 1 

Other ministers of the gospel took part in 
this work among the red men. The Rev. John 
Cotton, known chiefly as a preacher at Plym- 
outh, labored at one time for about two years 
on behalf of the English at 
Martha's Vineyard, and, being c ° laborers and 

«/ ' 7 ° Successors. 

acquainted with the language of 
the Indians, gave attention to them. That 
was during the life of the first Governor 
Mayhew (1665-1667). Rev. Josiah Torrey, 
pastor of the English Church at Tisbury, a 
contemporary of Experience Mayhew, cooper- 
ated with him. Having mastered their lan- 



1 Note 18. 



92 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

guage, he preached or lectured to the In- 
dians for many years. 

The Rev. Samuel Wiswall, pastor of the 
church in Edgartown, studied the language 
of the Indians with a view to making him- 
self useful among them. 

The evangelistic efforts of English preach- 
ers and their converts were not confined to 
Martha's Vineyard. Cotton Mather testifies: 
"As in the apostolic times the church sent 
forth from among themselves for the conver- 
sion of the nations, so these Indians on 
Martha's Vineyard did, not only to the isl- 
and of Nantucket, being about one thousand 
five hundred adult persons, but likewise to 
the mainland." x 

On Nantucket in 1694 there were three 
churches, one of them Baptist, and not a 
powwow remained. 

At the present time the Gay Head tribe 
on Martha's Vineyard, which numbers some- 
thing over one hundred and fifty, can hardly 
be called Indians, as there is not one of un- 
mixed blood among them. They are incorpo- 
rated as a town, and manage their own affairs 
as do people elsewhere. They have one school 
and a small Baptist church. 

Leaving Martha's Vineyard we cross Vine- 



1 Magnolia, B. VI, Sec. 2. 



AMONG INDIAN'S. 93 

yard Sound, five miles in width, to Cape Cod 
and enter Barnstable County, the most eastern 
county in Massachusetts. Here we come to an 
Indian settlement, about sixty miles southeast 
from Boston, called Marshpee. 1 Rev. Joseph 
Bourne was ordained here in 1729, but re- 
signed in 1748. His predecessor was Simon 
Patmonet and his successor Solomon Bryant. 
In 1693 Marshpee Indians, to the number 
of two hundred and fourteen, were under the 
care of Rev. Rowland Cotton, the first minis- 
ter of Sandwich. The Rev. Gideon Hawley, 
who had labored among the Indians in New 
York and at Stockbridge, was in- 
stalled as pastor at Marshpee, 1758, B £^** hl * 
and remained there for more than 
half a century, dying in 1807 at eighty years 
of age. In 1762 there were about seventy-five 
Indian families, which, however, did not aver- 
age four to a family. Till 1870 Marshpee con- 
tinued a reservation, but in that year was in- 
corporated as a town, and now has about three 
hundred inhabitants, none of whom are pure- 
blooded Indians. They have a public library 
and a Baptist church, which is supported partly 
from the Williams fund, which, in 1711, was 
left to Harvard College "for the blessed work 
of converting the Indians." 



1 Marshapee or Mashpee. The original Indian name was 
Mashippaug. 



94 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

Eastham, an easterly town in Barnstable 
County, was one seat of the Indians, to 
whom Rev. Samuel Treat preached in their 
language for many years. Under him were 
four Indian teachers, one each for their sev- 
eral villages. In 1693 he wrote President 
Increase Mather that there were five hun- 
dred and five adult Indians in that place. 
They lived in four separate villages, for 
which he procured schoolmasters. Mr. Treat 
was ordained as the first minister of East- 
ham, 1672, and soon after began to study the 
vernacular of neighboring natives, to whom he 
devoted much time and among whom there 
were not a few converts. 1 

We now return westward along the cape 
to Sandwich, which, in 1637, was purchased 
by Thomas Tupper, a man of property, to- 
gether with Richard Bourne. Tupper went 
there from Lynn; he was not educated for 
the ministry, yet he preached to the Indians 
and gathered a church consisting of them. 
In 1693 he regarded one hundred and eighty 
Indians as true Christians. 

The name of another layman in that neigh- 
borhood should be mentioned — Josiah Cotton, 
a brother of Rowland Cotton just mentioned. 
He was a judge, but preached more or less 



1 Mather's Magnalia, B. VI, Sec. 3. 



AMONG INDIANS. 95 

to the Indians at Manomet — now known as 
Monument, a part of Sandwich — and at other 
settlements under an engagement which con- 
tinued for nearly forty years. He was a 
graduate of Harvard College, 1698, and stud- 
ied divinity, but was never ordained. He 
composed a copious Indian and English vo- 
cabulary. 

We will follow the coast up to Plymouth, 
the oldest town in New England and thirty- 
seven miles southeast from Boston. This was 
the chief place of ministerial labor performed 
by John Cotton, son of the well- 
known John Cotton, of Boston. pl y meuth - 
His ordination took place here in 1669, and 
for about thirty years he preached also to 
congregations of Indians in the neighborhood, 
of whom about five hundred were under his 
care. He was a master of their language; 
and a revision of Eliot's Bible fell to him. 
His two sons, Josiah and Rowland, have 
already been mentioned. 

Returning now to Massachusetts Bay Col- 
ony, we find among the contemporaries of 
John Eliot some who studied 

,-1-, n ,-, ,• -i Massachusetts 

the language oi the natives, and 
yet more who interested them- 
selves in their welfare. It is not necessary 
to mention again the name of Major Gen- 
eral Gookin, who was superintendent and 



96 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

firm friend of the Indians; who cooperated 
efficiently with Eliot; the only magistrate 
who befriended the Christian Indians in the 
time of King Philip's War, for which he 
was abused and insulted. He died a poor 
man, March 19, 1687. One of his two sons 
who became ministers, Daniel, was a pastor 
at Sherborn, having at the same time some 
care of the Indians at Natick. 

Peter Thatcher, son of Rev. Thomas Thatcher, 
first minister of the Old South Church, Boston 
(ordained 1681), conducted a monthly lecture 
to the Indians. 

Rev. Grindall Rawson, a son of Secretary 
Edward Rawson, was ordained pastor of the 
church in Mendon about 1680, and preached 
to the Indians of that place in their own 
language Sunday evenings, though under great 
discouragements and not with great success. 

Samuel Danforth, minister at Taunton (1687- 
1727) — the son of Samuel Danforth, a col- 
league of Eliot (1650-1674) — translated five 
sermons of Dr. Increase Mather into Indian, 
which were printed in 1698. He labored for 
the welfare of the Indians in his neighbor- 
hood, preaching to them in their vernacular 
on certain " lecture days." A manuscript In- 
dian dictionary of his, which has never been 
printed, is in the library of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, Boston. 



AMONG INDIANS. 97 

We next moye westward, and to the pe- 
riod of more than a century and a half now 
gone by. John Sergeant, 1 who was four years 
a tutor in Yale College, after graduating there, 
1729, visited Housatonic, an Indian village 
in Western Massachusetts, and preached to 
those living there. He had long been in the 
habit of praying God daily that he would 
send him to the heathen that he might turn 
them from darkness to light. When he first 
went to the place just named 
(1734) the natives, called "River B c e *"*y C 
Indians," numbered less than fifty. 
Most of the same tribe lived within the lim- 
its of New York among the Dutch, who had 
made no attempt to civilize or Christianize 
them. There were a few in the northwest 
corner of Connecticut. This was at that time 
the largest tribe neighboring to any English 
settlements in New England. The village 
first visited by Sergeant was in the town 
of Sheffield, and there was another village 
eighteen miles farther up the Housatonic 
River within the bounds of Stockbridge. Noth- 
ing less than a deep conviction of Christian 
duty could have reconciled him to exchange 
academic society and occupation for hardships 



1 Samuel Hopkins : Historical Memoirs Relating to the Housa- 
tunnock Indians. Boston, N. E. 1753. 



98 PKOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

otherwise unwelcome. Two sons of prominent 
Indians accompanied Sergeant to New Haven, 
who instructed them there till his college en- 
gagement was closed. 

One great obstacle to his success among the 
Indians was the neighboring traders, chiefly 
Dutch, who found that their nefarious gains 
from the sale of rum were endangered, and 
who represented that the new religion was not 
a good one, and that it was the design of the 
English to enslave them. But Sergeant set 
himself resolutely to work and to prayer. The 
next year (1735) he received ordination, his 
excellency the governor of the colony and the 
commissioners of the missionary corporation be- 
ing present. 

His instruction of the children, as well as 
more formal ministrations, were at first through 
an interpreter; but he saw that a knowledge 
of the vernacular was indispensable, and so set 
himself earnestly to acquire it. After about 
three years he began to preach in that difficult 
tongue, and after two years more (1739) he 
had so far mastered it that the Indians were 
accustomed to say, " Our minister speaks our 
language better than we ourselves can do." * 
He translated prayers, portions of Scripture, 
and Dr. Watts' Catechism for Children. Dr. 
Watts sent the contribution of a few friends, 



Note 19. 



AMONG INDIANS. 99 

amounting to seventy pounds, to aid the mis- 
sion. 

In the course of his second year of labor 
(1736) a township of six miles square, within 
the limits of Stockbridge, was granted to the 
Indians by the General Provincial Court, and 
they began to remove there as a place of com- 
mon settlement. Previously they had moved 
about in small groups according as the seasons 
for fishing or the chase invited. A few white 
families settled at Stockbridge, partly for ben- 
efit to the natives, and Sergeant also estab- 
lished himself there. Mr. Timothy Woodbridge 
became his assistant and taught a school. Mr. 
Isaac Hollis, of London, nephew of Thomas Hol- 
lis, the benefactor of Harvard College, offered, 
through Dr. Coleman, of Boston, to support 
twelve scholars under the care of Sergeant 
from year to year. 1 On this Hollis foundation 
he received boys to his own house. Through 
the same channel Samuel Holden, Esq., of Lon- 
don, made a remittance of one hundred pounds 
for the benefit of the mission. So favorable 
were the representations of the work made in 
England that his royal highness the Prince of 
Wales headed a subscription (1745) in aid of 



1 The Eev. Isaac Hollis made remittance in behalf of In- 
dian boys: 1732, £100; 1736, £56; 1738, £343 ; 1740, £447 9s. 
After this later date £50 annually, and subsequently £120 
each year. 



100 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

the boarding school by giving twenty guineas; 
the Duke of Cumberland followed with the same 
amount ; the Duke of Dorset, Lord Gower, and 
the Lord Chancellor giving each five guineas. 
Contributions towards the good work were made 
in Connecticut, especially at Lebanon; and a 
gentleman in Hartford, Mr. Ellery, bequeathed 
a hundred and twenty pounds. The General 
Court of Massachusetts favored the mission, 
providing a place of worship and a schoolhouse 
(1738), and also incurring expense for the re- 
moval of inhabitants to the town which had 
been given, as before mentioned. Later, having 
a mixed congregation of Indians and English, 
Mr. Sergeant preached in both languages, two 
sermons in each, on the Lord's Day. 

During the period of his labor at Stockbridge 
he visited Indians elsewhere in Massachusetts 
and in Connecticut, besides a tour among those 
on the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers, dis- 
tant more than two hundred miles from Stock- 
bridge. Sergeant died July 27, 1749, in the 
thirty-ninth year of his age. A daughter of 
his was the grandmother of the late President 
Mark Hopkins. 

When Sergeant began his work there were 
in the place of his first visit less than fifty In- 
dians; at the time of his death there were at 
Stockbridge over fifty-three families, numbering 
two hundred and eighteen souls, of whom one 



AMONG INDIANS. 101 

hundred and twenty-nine were baptized; while of 
these, forty-two were communicants. The whole 
number baptized by him was one hundred and 
eighty-two. The attendance in Mr. Woodbridge's 
school averaged about forty. 

From intemperance, a prevailing and ruinous 
practice of the Indians, they were, for the most 
part, recovered. Their bark wigwams gave place 
to houses well built after the manner of white 
neighbors, of whom there were a dozen families 
at the time of Sergeant's decease. Dissensions 
among the English residents and other causes 
— the French war of 1744 and onward one of 
them — interfered with the success of Sergeant 
as minister and of Mr. Woodbridge as teacher. 

After the death of Mr. Sergeant about ninety 
Mohawk Indians came from the neighborhood 
of Albany to live at Stockbridge, especially in 
the winter of 1750-51. Meanwhile the Rev. 
Jonathan Edwards, 1 having been dismissed from 
the church in Northampton (June, 
1750), received proposals from the ^°" a * n 
commissioners, residing in Boston, 
of the Society in London for Propagating the 
Gospel in New England and the Parts Adja- 
cent to become a missionary at Stockbridge. 
He was also invited by the church and congre- 
gation in that place to become their minister. 
This was early in the winter of 1751. Soon 

1 Dwight's Life of Edwards, Chapters XXV-XXVIII. 



102 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

after receiving these overtures, but before de- 
ciding upon them, he went to Stockbridge and 
remained there till early spring, preaching to 
the English inhabitants and, through an inter- 
preter, to the Indians. He accepted the two 
offers, and his formal installation took place 
the eighth of August that year. Edwards 
preached twice weekly to the whites, and once 
a week each to the Housatonics and the Mo- 
hawks. Thus, like Eliot, the Mayhews, Cot- 
ton, and other Massachusetts ministers who 
labored in behalf of the Indians, he had at the 
same time an English congregation in charge. 
During his six years' residence at Stockbridge 
Edwards wrote several elaborate theological 
treatises — The Freedom of the Will, God's Last 
End in Creation, The Nature of Virtue, and 
Original Sin. 

The circumstances and the period of his mis- 
sionary work were peculiarly unfavorable. Ve- 
hement dissensions existed among the white 
residents at Stockbridge. The disbursement of 
funds furnished by the colonial legislature, by 
the commissioners at Boston, and by individ- 
uals in England became a temptation, especially 
to one family, which arrayed itself persistently 
against Edwards. Owing to attendant unfaith- 
fulness and mismanagement, which he found it 
impossible to correct — which were much like 
what continues now to be witnessed on Indian 



AMONG INDIANS. 103 

reservations — most of the Mohawks and some 
of the other Indians left the place in natural 
disgust. Hardly three years had passed before 
French and Indian hostilities began, and Stock- 
bridge, being a frontier settlement, was much 
exposed. Several persons were killed there as 
early as 1754, and great alarm prevailed. Evan- 
gelistic endeavors always suffer in war time. In 
1757 Edwards was called — a son-in-law, Presi- 
dent Burr, having died — to take his place as 
president of New Jersey College at Princeton. 

No one in this class need be told that Presi- 
dent Jonathan Edwards had a son, Dr. Jonathan 
Edwards, who also became president of a col- 
lege — Union College, Schenectady, New York. 
This son, removing when six years of age with 
his father to Stockbridge, learned the Mohegan 
language at that place. The elder Edwards de- 
signed that this son should be a missionary 
among the aborigines, and hence sent him at 
ten years of age (1755), with the Rev. Gideon 
Hawley, to learn the language of the Oneidas 
near the head waters of the Susquehanna. He 
became president of the college above named 
(1799), and but two years later died at the 
age of fifty-six. Like his father, he was a tutor 
in the institution whence he had graduated; 
he had two pastorates; his term in the college 
presidency was brief — only two years; and his 
age was only two years greater than that of his 



104 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

father — fifty-six instead of fifty-four. Owing to 
these coincidences it is not strange that the 
two men should sometimes be mistaken for one 
another by ill-informed persons, especially in 
Europe. 

Rev. Stephen West, D.D., was ordained at 
Stockbridge in 1759, and among. the many ad- 
mitted to the church during his ministry were 
twenty-two Indians. In 1775 he gave up the 
care of the Indians, and received his support 

as pastor wholly from the whites. 
L , John Sergeant, Jr., son of the 

first missionary at Stockbridge, ac- 
quired the Mohegan x language in boyhood, and 
having studied divinity with Dr. West took 
charge of the Indians as their missionary. He 
labored there, preaching to them and teaching 
in an Indian school, for ten years ; but in 1785 
this relict of aboriginalism was removed to land 
given them by the Oneidas in the State of 
New York — a tract the same in size (six miles 
square) as the Massachusetts court gave to 
the Indians at Stockbridge. The village built 
there bore the name of New Stockbridge. The 
well-known Mohegan preacher, Samson Occom, 
visited the place and a division occurred, one 
Indian church choosing him for pastor and the 
rest remaining with Mr. Sergeant. When Mr. 
Occom died (1792) a reunion of the churches 



Moheakunnuk (Mu-he-con-nuk). 



AMONG INDIANS. 105 

was effected. In the years 1818 and 1822, 
respectively, these New Stockbridge Indians, 
separating into two bodies, removed to Indiana 
and Wisconsin. Mr. Sergeant, unable to ac- 
company either band, died (1824) at the age 
of seventy-seven. 

It is worthy of note that the English colo- 
nists within the limits of the present Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts entered upon the work 
of evangelizing aborigines more generally and 
continued therein more systematic- 
ally and with greater perseverance er J era 

J . siderations. 

than was done in any other New 

England State. In Vermont and New Hamp- 
shire there were comparatively few Indians. 
Those in Maine came chiefly under Roman 
Catholic influence. Of four prominent laymen 
who engaged in the religious instruction of 
these heathen neighbors the names have been 
mentioned. "Some of the Indians," says Cot- 
ton Mather, " quickly built for themselves good 
and large meeting houses after the English 
mode, in which, also after the " English mode, 
they attended the things of the kingdom of 
heaven. And some of the English were helpful 
to them on this account, among whom I ought 
particularly to mention that learned, pious, and 
charitable gentleman, the worshipful Samuel 
Sewall, Esq., who at his own charge built a 
meeting house for one of the Indian congrega- 



106 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

tions and gave those Indians cause to pray for 
him under that character — 'he loveth our na- 
tion, for he hath built us a synagogue.' " * 

All circumstances considered — relative popu- 
lation and valuation, more especially the early 
condition of exiles making a home for them- 
selves in an unreclaimed wilderness — the mis- 
sionary spirit of our fathers not merely equaled 
but surpassed that of the present generation. 

We pass to Rhode Island. Roger Williams, so 
well known in the early history of Massachu- 
setts, was born in Wales (1599) five years ear- 
lier than John Eliot. He was converted at ten 

years of age, was graduated at Pem- 
w ° ger broke College, Cambridge, and came 

to this country the same year that 
the apostle to the Indians arrived (1631). He 
became the father of Rhode Island, or rather 
of the Providence Plantation (1636), the same 
year that Hooker and his associates reached 
Hartford, Connecticut. In 1654 he was chosen 
president of the colony in Rhode Island. 

While pastor previously at Plymouth he 
gained acquaintance with the sachems of the 
Wampanoags and Narragansets and learned 
their language. He continued a warm friend 
of the Indians and acquired great influence 
among them. In 1645 he was largely instru- 
mental in securing a treaty which, to all 



Magnolia, B. Ill (h). 



AMONG INDIANS. 107 

appearance, prevented a war upon the New 
England colonies. 

Roger Williams was the first to publish a 
vocabulary of the Indian language. It was pre- 
pared during a voyage to England and entitled 
A Key to the Language of America (London, 
1643), and consisted of thirty-two chapters, 
each containing a short list of words, dialogues 
in Indian and English, also a poem. With ref- 
erence to acquiring this vernacular he states: 
" God was pleased to give me a painful, patient 
spirit to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky 
holes, even while I lived at Plymouth and 
Salem, to gain their tongue." In the Key he 
states that many hundreds of times "he had 
preached to great numbers, to their great de- 
light and great convictions," "with all sorts of 
nations of them, from one end of the country 
to the other." Certain limitations to this are 
obvious. 

That Roger Williams was a man of intrepid- 
ity and that he was a power for good among 
the Indians admits of no doubt. Positive 
evidence of any marked Christian results are 
wanting. He established no schools and gath- 
ered no churches. Regarding organization and 
ordinances, his views would seem to have re- 
sembled those of the present English Plymouth 
Brethren. There is a tinge of boasting as 
well as of un scriptural sentiment in what he 



108 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

says regarding the natives : x "I could readily 
have brought the whole country to have ob- 
served one day in seven ; to have received a 
baptism or washing, though it were in rivers, 
as the first Christians and the Lord Jesus him- 
self did ; to have come to a stated church 
meeting, maintained priests and forms of prayer, 
and a whole form of antichristian worship." 2 

Westerly, the southwestern town of Rhode 
Island, 3 was within the territory occupied by 
the Niantics. To those Indians the Society for 
Propagating the Gospel sent, in 1733, the Rev. 
Joseph Park " as a missionary to the Indians 
and such English as would attend 
in Westerly." He does not appear 
to have been a converted man till some years 
later, when the awakening of 1740 began. His 
testimony regarding the spiritual state of that 
region is noteworthy : " Before this day of 
God's power there was not, as far as ever I 
learned, one house of prayer in the place, in 
two large towns containing some hundreds of 
families, nor any that professed the faith of 
God's own operation or the doctrine of grace. 
Now, when the Lord set up his sanctuary in 



1 In the tract, Christening Makes Not Christians. 

2 Reuben A. Guild, LL.D., in the Home Mission Monthly, 1892, 
pp. 325-331. James D. Knowles : Memoir of Roger Williams. 
Boston, 1834. 

3 Frederick Penison : Westerly and its Witnesses, 1626-1876. 
Providence, 1878. Pp. 28-82. 



AMONG INDIANS. 109 

the midst of us, those heads of families who 
had been the happy subjects of his grace im- 
mediately set up the worship of God in their 
houses." Niantics shared in some measure with 
their white neighbors the blessings of that gra- 
cious visitation. A church was formed in 1750. 
Ninigret seems to have been gratified with the 
change in his tribe. 

The same society sent Mr. Bennet (1764) as a 
teacher. He met with encouragement, and the 
next year Thomas Ninigret, known as "King 
Tom " — who came to the throne, such as it 
was, in 1746 — petitioned the society to estab- 
lish free schools. His letter of request closes 
expressing the hope " that when time with us 
shall be no more; that when we and the chil- 
dren, over whom you have been such benefac- 
tors, shall leave the sun and stars, we shall 
rejoice in a far superior light." 

Rev. William Thompson "ministered to the 
Pequots at Mystic and Paweatuck" from 1657 
to 1663 ; he received aid from the Society for 
Propagating the Gospel. The name of Samuel 
Niles is mentioned as an earnest "Indian ex- 
horter." The first Niantic ordained as minister 
of that church was James Simons; the last of 
any note was Moses Stanton, ordained in 1823. 
The present meeting house, built of stone, was 
put up in 1860, but will not improbably yet 
become like the gravestone of Takawompait at 



110 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

Natick, a mere monument of a vanished Niantic 
tribe. 

We next come to Connecticut. One of the 
earliest instances of preaching to the Indians in 
Connecticut was by John Eliot. He had occa- 
sion to come to the city of Hartford to attend a 
council. 1 After that he addressed the Podunks 
on the opposite side of the river. But they 
were ill-disposed toward the English and toward 
the gospel. Eliot also visited that 
part of the Nipmuck country sit- 
uated in the northeastern part of 
the State, and a rock in the town of Wood- 
stock, not far from the residence of Henry C. 
Bowen, Esq., is pointed out on which the apos- 
tle to the Indians preached. It was in the 
years 1673 and 1674 that Eliot, accompanied 
by Gookin, traveled through this region intent 
upon making known the word of life. 

Abraham Pierson, 2 who became the first min- 
ister in Branford, New Haven County, in 1644, 
graduated at the University of Cambridge, Eng- 
land, the year after Eliot and Roger Williams 
came to Massachusetts (1632). Having previ- 
ously acquired the native language on Long 
Island, he preached to the red men there and 
did the same in several plantations of the New 
Haven Colony during his twenty years' minis- 



Encyclopcedia of Missions, I, 456. 
; Mather's Magnalia, B. Ill, Chap. 8. 



AMONG INDIANS. Ill 

try in Connecticut before removing to Newark, 
New Jersey. No marked success appears to 
have attended this department of his labor. 

Rev. James Fitch came to New England 
seven years later than Eliot and Roger Wil- 
liams (1638). He was the first pastor of a 
church in Saybrook, which was removed to 
Norwich in 1660, where his ministry continued 
many years. He acquainted himself with the 
language of the Mohegans in the neighborhood 
of Norwich, preached to them, and gave them 
a part of his own land as an inducement to 
adopt settled and civilized habits. He gathered 
a church of forty members ; but King Philip's 
War arrested the good work there as elsewhere. 

Jonathan Barber, employed by the Society 
for the Propagation of the Gospel in New Eng- 
land, labored among the Mohegans from 1733 
to 1742. 

Moravians, too, were early on the ground. 
Christian Henry Rauch, a missionary, landed in 
New York, 1740, and proceeding to Duchess 
County began work anions: the 

-i 7 m Moravians. 

Mohegans there. This was a year 
before David Brainerd commenced his labors at 
Kaunaumeek. Other Moravian laborers joined 
Rauch. Indians were drawn to them from the 
western part of Connecticut, especially from 
Kent, in Litchfield County. The brethren vis- 
ited that place, as well as Sharon and Salis- 



112 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

bury; also parts of New Haven and Fairfield 
Counties. These scattered remnants of Mo- 
hegans, Narragansets, and Wampanoags were 
known in those regions as Scatticokes. But 
hostile white legislation and trade drove the 
missionaries away, and many of the Christian 
Indians followed them to Pennsylvania; but 
missionaries continued to visit from time to 
time the Indians who remained behind. 

Rev. Eleazer Wheelock, D.D., of Lebanon, Con- 
necticut, established a school, being impressed by 
the condition of the Indians in that neighbor- 
hood, which had reference largely to civilizing 

and Christianizing them. He met 

Wheelock. . _ 5 

with encouragement; but not being 

able to carry on and especially to enlarge the 
work at his own expense, he appealed to the 
public. In 1766 he sent the Rev. Mr. Whittaker, 
a minister of Norwich, and Samson Occom to 
Great Britain for the purpose of soliciting aid. 
In England they raised about seven thousand 
pounds. The society in Scotland issued a me- 
morial to the ministers of that country, and 
the result was about two thousand pounds, 
which remained in the hands of the society and 
on which interest accrued in years when no 
remittance was made. The funds in England 
were placed in the hands of a board of trust, 
of which the Earl of Dartmouth was the head. 
A house and two acres of land having been 



AMONG INDIANS. 113 

given by Joshua Moor, a farmer, the institution 
took the name of " Moor's Charity School.'' 
The legislatures of Connecticut and Massachu- 
setts made grants in aid, and in 1762 Dr. 
Wheelock had more than twenty youths under 
his care. Unable to secure land enough in Leb- 
anon, a site was selected in New Hampshire, 
where the present town of Hanover stands. 
The school was transferred to that place and 
Dartmouth College founded, 1769. A charter 
for both institutions was afterwards obtained, 
but the funds for each were separately admin- 
istered. 1 A good deal of unsatisfactory corre- 
spondence ensued between Dr. Wheelock and his 
successors, on the one hand, and the society in 
Scotland on the other; also between the board 
of commissioners in Boston and the society. 
One chief occasion of interchange of letters 
was the circumstance that Indian youths, whose 
expenses were to be met, did not present them- 
selves at the college. 

Dr. Wheelock had charge of the school in 
Lebanon about thirty years, and the further 
charge of it, as well as of the college at Han- 
over, for nine years. He found, however, that 
Indian young men, though well educated, could 
not generally be depended on as educators of 



1 " Wheelock's School was incorporated as Dartmouth Col- 
lege : " Encyclopaedia of Missions, I, p. 457. This misconception 
is often met with, but the two institutions were kept distinct. 



114 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

their countrymen. Of forty such — the cele- 
brated Brant one of them — who had been 
under his care, one half returned to savage life. 
With the exception of Samson Occom, it does 
not appear that any Indians trained at Moor's 
School turned their education to good account 
in a marked degree. 

Samson Occom sought admission to the fore- 
named school, 1743, where, in the family of 
Dr. Wheelock, he remained four or five years. 
He was the first aboriginal preacher from the 

_ new world who visited Great Brit- 

Occom. 

ain. He had been ordained by the 
Suffolk Presbytery of Long Island (1759), and 
during the visit referred to he preached to 
thronged audiences between three and four 
hundred times in different parts of the king- 
dom. 

Before going to England he taught a school 
in New London (1748), but went thence to 
Montauk, on Long Island, where for a decade 
he taught among the Indians and preached to 
them in their own language. In 1786 he re- 
moved to Brothertown, or Brotherton, in the 
neighborhood of Utica, New York, and labored 
among the Indians who, after enjoying the minis- 
try of Sergeant and President Edwards, had been 
transplanted from Stockbridge, Massachusetts. A 
few Mohegans from Connecticut, Rhode Island, 
and Long Island removed to Brotherton near 



AMONG INDIANS. 115 

the time that Occom went there. He died 
1792, aged about seventy, and his funeral was 
attended by upwards of three hundred Indians. 
A sermon preached by him at the execution of 
Moses Paul, an Indian, in New Haven, was 
published, and he is credited with being the 
author of the impressive hymn: 

"Awaked by Sinai's awful sound." 1 

The story of other early evangelistic efforts in 
behalf of the six nations and in behalf of Indi- 
ans in the southern colonies would be wearisome. 
The character, habits, and environment of the 
aboriginal tribes were unfriendly to evangelistic 

approaches. The race was, in some 

, . Conclusion. 

respects, comparatively an imprac- 
ticable one. Indifference to neighboring superi- 
ority, aversion to industry, apathy alternating 
with thirst for war, appeared to doom them 
to self-destruction. As regards agriculture and 
other fundamental arts, not to mention refining 
arts, they were the antipodes of the busy Chi- 
nese and the quick-witted Japanese. Their sen- 
sibilities were the dullest; they seldom wept or 
smiled ; they had no ennobling traditions. 

The problem of Christianizing red men was 
a more formidable one than our fathers at first 
imagined. The early planters of New England 
engaged in the good work quite as promptly 



1 See Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 855. 



116 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

as could reasonably have been expected, and 
in some notable instances their success was be- 
yond reasonable expectation. 

Taking a retrospective glance at the path 
thus far traversed, it will be recollected that 
apparent ignorance in regard to Protestant mis- 
sions prior to the present century, or an inex- 
cusable oversight regarding them, was avowed 
as one occasion for this course of lectures. It 
is a common but unintelligent impression that 
interest and effort in the line of foreign evan- 
gelization had scarcely any place in New Eng- 
land, or in the country at large, or elsewhere 
in Protestant Christendom, till near the close 
of the last century. Consequently undue praise 
has been bestowed upon the onward movement 
which then took place. Noteworthy it was; 
not, however, on the score of priority and en- 
tire originality. It was an outcome of thoughts 
and influences which had long existed. One of 
the most northern sources of the River Jordan 
is a spring at Hasbeiya, which sends forth a 
stream sufficient at once to turn a mill wheel; 
but it is fed by rivulets under ground that 
trickle unseen from the heights and slopes of 
Anti-Lebanon. Similar is it usually with sa- 
cred streams that water and fertilize the earth. 
They start from points various, remote, and ele- 
vated, and that attract little attention till seen 
in a combined and effective flow. 



DAVID BRAINERD. 117 



DAVID BRAINERD. 



LECTURE VI. — DAVID BRAINERD. 

Influence that moves men heavenward meas- 
ures personal excellence. Religious character is 
the dwelling place of ultimate spiritual power. 
To be such as sweetly constrains others to holy 
living, reproducing similar traits and similar ac- 
tivities, renders any one. worthy of study and of 
a portrait. To that class belongs David Brain erd. 
His brief career of labor was remarkable, but his 
religious character more remarkable. His spirit- 
ual life was the man. Self-denial was complete 
in him. Heroism of duty was his characteristic. 

When the learned Jerome laid down the Life 
of Hilarion he said, " Well, Hilarion shall be the 
champion that I will follow; his good life shall 
be my example and his good death my prec- 
edent." The biography of Brainerd has had 
similar marked influence upon the piety of 
numerous Christian men. Dr. Ryland, for ex- 
ample, an eminent English minister, was often 
heard to remark that BraineroVs Life ranked 



118 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

with him next to the Bible. "When reading 
such lives as those of Brainerd and Doddridge," 
said Dr. Chalmers, "I have often stood amazed — 
I could almost say envious of their power to sus- 
tain a real and spiritual intercourse with heaven 

for large portions of a whole day." 
ramer -g^ .^ . g particularly appropriate 

that we turn to the roll of mis- 
sionaries. Brainerd's life impressed and stim- 
ulated Carey. 1 Levi Parsons, the first Protes- 
tant missionary to enter Jerusalem (1820) with 
a view to engage in permanent work there, re- 
ceived impulse from Brainerd. He also fur- 
nished incitement to Marsden, whose labors in 
New South Wales and in behalf of New Zea- 
land are well known. 2 

Nor was Brainerd's stimulating influence lim- 
ited to such individuals in the first instance. 
Through them it has been transmitted to yet 
others. Henry Martyn 3 was indebted not a lit- 
tle to David Brainerd; and Professor Tholuck 
of Halle acknowledges religious indebtedness 
to Henry Martyn. 4 Brainerd's influence, ex- 
tending to various quarters of the world, is 
still prolonged in many a consecrated life. But 



1 Memoir, by Eustace Carey. Chap. Ill, Sec. 1. Life, by 
George Smith, 449-50. 

2 J. B. Marsden's Memoirs of Samuel Marsden, Chap. I. 

3 Journal and Letters, I, 162, 444. 

4 Note 20. 



DAVID BRAINERD. 119 

Brainerd as a missionary can be understood only 
with the knowledge of him as a Christian. 

Hadclam, in Connecticut, was the place, and 
April 20, 1718, the date, of his birth. His 
father, the Hon. Hezekiah Brainerd, was a man 
of some prominence in the colony, and his an- 
cestry on the maternal side was noteworthy for 
the number of its ministers. Sobriety and a 
religious turn of mind characterized his early 
years. Repeated awakenings and alarms, at- 
tended by much prayer and strenuous effort, 
were experienced, but were marred 
by a self-righteous element. Imag- pm ? a 

. ° . ° Struggles. 

inary dedication of himself to God, 
imaginary good frames, with tenderness and ear- 
nestness, at intervals marked his inner life. 
These prolonged and vigorous endeavors, how- 
ever, proceeded from an aim to earn the divine 
favor; they were regarded as meritorious and as 
qualifying for acceptance by Christ. Such striv- 
ing to make himself his own saviour of course 
did not succeed. The strictness of God's law, 
the demand for faith in Christ as a condition, 
the divine sovereignty as set forth in Romans xi, 
awakened latent enmity to God. Then at length 
he saw as in a mirror his real self — his rebellious 
self; saw that hideous self-conceit had been -piling 
up religious efforts in order to make it too hard 
for God to cast him off. 

He was twenty-one years of age when this 



120 PBOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

decisive discovery took place. Thereupon en- 
sued the great spiritual change. He found that 
he was an utterly lost sinner; that no doings 
of his own could lay God under obligation to 
bestow mercy. All things became new to him. 
"My soul rejoiced with joy unspeakable," he 
says, "to see such a God, such a glorious 

divine being, and I was inwardly 
nstian pi ease j an( j satisfied that he should 

be God over all forever and ever. 
My soul was so captivated and delighted with 
the excellency, loveliness, greatness, and other 
perfections of God that I was even swallowed 
up in him — at least to that degree that I had 
no thought (as I remember) at first about my 
own salvation and scarce reflected that there 
was such a creature as myself." "At this time 
the way of salvation opened to me with such 
infinite wisdom, suitableness, and excellency 
that I wondered I should ever think of any 
other way of salvation." 

That year (1739) he entered Yale College. 
While there a revival of religion occurred at 
New Haven, and Brainerd felt a deep interest 
in the spiritual welfare of fellow students. The 
conversion of the celebrated Samuel Hopkins 
appears to have been due to his influence. 
But that revival was attended, as elsewhere, 
by a degree of unheal thful excitement and con- 
sequently by some exceptionable proceedings. 



DAVID BEAINERD. 121 

Brainerd made privately a remark relating to 
one of the college tutors, which, being over- 
heard by another student, was communicated to 
an injudicious woman, and at length reported 
to the rector or president. A statement of this 
remark was extorted from those „ „ 

. . . College Career. 

who heard it, for which private 
offense he was required to make a public con- 
fession. Not complying with that unauthorized 
demand, and having attended a religious meet- 
ing contrary to the rector's arbitrary order, he 
was expelled from college in 1742 — his junior 
year. However inexcusable the offense, the 
discipline was still more inexcusable. One of 
Brainerd's biographers T remarks, " That individ- 
ual fully justified by his subsequent proceed- 
ings" the phrase used in regard to the tutor, 
which was, a He has no more piety than this 
chair." Other indefensible things occurred at 
that period. The Rev. Samuel Finley, after- 
wards president of New Jersey College, was 
prosecuted for preaching at New Haven, sent 
to jail, and then sent out of the colony as a 
vagrant. Ministers of experience and general 
good judgment were in some instances carried 
away by an unprecedented tide of excitement. 
Was it strange that a young collegian should 
be betrayed into an indiscretion? No similar 



1 The Kev. fm. B. O. Peabody. Chap. I. 



122 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

imprudence on his part is known to have oc- 
curred subsequently. Ten years after that date 
President Clap himself went to such a meeting 
as the one which the disciplined student had 
attended. 

Christian graces shone with uncommon luster 
in Brainerd. The injustice which President 
Edwards, President Burr, and other dispassion- 
ate friends believed to have been done him, so 
far from souring his spirit, was the occasion 
of a rare exercise of forgiveness. 1 This truly 
Christlike temper was far removed from self- 
complacent placidity. His sensibilities and 
emotions were keen. For example, 

e lgious Brainerd's sense of unworthiness 
Exercises. 

and his self-abasement were pro- 
found, and this appears to have been independ- 
ent of the occasion of his being placed under 
a ban at college. After a century and a half 
the record before us reads remarkably in a time 
when we hear so little about conviction of sin: 
"I see myself infinitely vile and unworthy; . . . 
an unfathomable abyss of desperate wickedness 
in the heart." These are the utterances of a 
man outwardly irreproachable. John Bunyan 
here comes to mind; but Bunyan had a lively 
imagination, Brainerd had not. He indulged 
in none of the illusory experiences of the 
period — sudden impressions, bright visions, and 



1 Note 21. 



DAVID BKAINEKD. 123 

the like ; nor, on the other hand, does there ap- 
pear to have been the faintest trace of — what 
may sometimes be discovered — a subtle self- 
righteous humiliation, a conceit of wretchedness. 

Coupled with a deep and honest self-abase- 
ment were lively aspirations after holiness. 
"I know," so he writes, "that I long for 
God and a conformity to his will in inward 
purity and holiness ten thousand times more 
than for anything here below." What mystic 
ever had more intense yearning for conformity 
to God ? But Brainerd was not a mystic ; his 
was no ill-regulated fancy, lifting him into the 
realm of enthusiasm — a realm verging toward 
pantheism. Likeness to God and personal ab- 
sorption in God differ widely as heaven from 
earth. David Brainerd showed no affinity with 
Eckhart the Doctor Ucstaticus. Longing for 
holiness was with him well defined ; was Scrip- 
tural, and not lost in rhapsody. Never would 
he listen to the self-flattery of perfectionism, 
that comfortable, purring delusion. Forgiveness 
he sought and obtained through Christ, but he 
could not forgive himself. 

The supreme motive of any man determines 
his character. What was Brainerd's chief de- 
sire? Evidently to renounce self and to honor 
God. Listen to him once more : " My soul 
longed with a vehement desire to live to God. 
. . . My soul cried, Lord, set up thy kingdom 



124 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

for thine own glory; glorify thyself and I shall 
rejoice. Get honor to thy blessed name and this 
is all I desire. Do with me just what thou wilt." 

Brainerd was constitutionally melancholy, and 
that gave a coloring to his religious experience. 
A morbid tendency had long had place in the 
family. But who is responsible for the temper- 
ament with which he is born? The possibility 
and duty of correcting inherent 
T 1S tendencies are points not easily 

determined. Brainerd dwelt dis- 
proportionately on the waywardness of his 
heart — disproportionately as compared with the 
believer's privilege of contemplating the ampli- 
tude of divine promises and the freedom of 
access to the all-cleansing fountain. Introspec- 
tion may not have been too frequent nor too 
searching, but there should have been more of 
what he enjoined upon others, more of exultant 
"looking unto Jesus." Holy joy upon the par- 
don of sin is no less warranted than godly sorrow 
for sin is demanded. 

Brainerd was a man of superior mental power. 
So President Edwards regarded him. 1 He led 
his class in college — the largest which up to 
that time had entered Yale. The logical 
faculty was well developed. In him religious 
ardor is easily distinguished from the vehemence 



Note 22. 



DAYID BRAINERD. 125 

of a wayward fancy or the vehemence of mis- 
guided zeal, so sadly exhibited by Separatists 
during the period of the Great Awakening. 

The question is pertinent here, Did Brainerd 
have exaggerated views of his sinfulness? The 
superficiality of our day may impute his unusual 
self-abasement to a disordered temperament. We 
turn to some of the memoranda and memora- 
bilia of penitential autobiography, those not as- 
sociated with melancholy. " The chiefest of 
apostles " exclaims, " O wretched man that I 
am ! who shall deliver me from the body of 
this death?" The godly Bishop 
Beveridge confesses : * "I cannot ° * a ££ er " 

° # ation. 

pray but I sin; I cannot hear or 

preach a sermon but I sin ; I cannot give an 
alms or receive the sacrament but I sin ; nay, 
I cannot so much as confess my sins but my 
very confessions are aggravations of shame. 
My repentance needs to be repented of; my 
tears want washing." The seraphic Rutherford 
records, " Here I die with wondering that jus- 
tice hindereth not love, for there are none in 
hell nor out of hell more unworthy of Christ's 
love." A well-known memorandum of Jonathan 
Edwards need not be cited ; yet was any con- 
temporary of Jonathan Edwards his superior 
in piety, or more sober-minded than he? We 
do not, of course, intimate that only such 

1 Private Thoughts. Art. IV. 



126 PROTESTANT MISSIONS, 

experience is genuine, nor that it is to be 
sought after. We do inquire, however, Has 
any man ever had unauthorized discoveries of 
his ill-desert? If the piercing search-light of 
heaven, or merely the lightning of Sinai, were 
turned full upon our inner selves, would any 
of us have less profound convictions of sin? 

Brainerd's despondency, resulting from inborn 
predisposition, differed, for instance, from a tran- 
sient experience of Sir Robert Boyle, due to 
the temporary unsettlement of religious belief; 
it differed from that of Cowper, which was the 
hallucination of a disordered mind. It was 
more like that of the German poet, Gellert, a 
thoroughly Christian man, yet the victim of 
great depression of spirit. In Brainerd there 
was no affinity with enthusiasts like George 
Fox, nor with zealots who arrogated a superior 
sanctity, as James Davenport. The hospital is 
the appropriate home for such. Spiritual de- 
lirium never seized him. The ship might seem 
at times to be water-logged, but compass and 
helm were still in good order. The pole star 
was always in place, though the sun did not 
always shine. The work of grace in his soul 
appears to have been deeper than that of 
Augustine, and his diary is of more practical 
value than the confessions of that renowned 
church father. His experience was an echo of 
Romans vii, an object lesson of Edwards on the 



DAVID BEAINEED. 127 

Affections. This should be added — he kept his 
melancholy very much to himself; it cast no 
social gloom. He was companionable, free and 
entertaining in conversation, with nothing of 
the demure or morose about him. 1 

We have thus seen the man. We now turn 
to his missionary career. A " Society in Scot- 
land for Propagating Christian Knowledge " 
was formed in the year 1709. Not far from 
the time that Brain erd entered college prom- 
inent ministers in the city and neighborhood 
of New York — among whom were Jonathan 
Dickinson, of Elizabethtown, and Rev. Aaron 
Burr, both of them afterwards successively 
presidents of New Jersey College — wrote to 
Scotland regarding the wretched 

tx- £ <t j- - xi Preliminary. 

condition 01 Indians in the prov- 
inces of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsyl- 
vania. The result was an agreement by the 
forenamed society to sustain two missionaries 
among those Indians, also the appointment of 
a commission, consisting of clergymen and lay- 
men, to administer the affair in behalf of the 
Scottish organization. The first selection was 
that of Azariah Horton, who, beginning in 
August, 1741, labored with considerable success 
among the Indians on Long Island. They had 
two small settlements at the east end besides 
little groups elsewhere. Intemperance, intro- 

1 Edwards' Memoir of Brainerd, 382, 473. 



128 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

duced among them by their white neighbors, 
was the chief hindrance. The next year 
(November 25, 1742) Brainerd received ap- 
pointment from the commissioners or corre- 
spondents. He had been previously licensed 
as a minister of the gospel by the Ministerial 
Association which met at Danbury, Connecti- 
cut, July 29, 1742. His treatment at New 
Haven did not abate general respect for him. 
At this time a controversy was pending in 
regard to the land-tenure of those Indians 
among whom Brainerd was expected to labor; 
and hence, pursuant to information from the 
missionary (Sergeant) at Stockbridge, Massachu- 
setts, he went to Kaunaumeek, 1 a settlement 
in the woods between Stockbridge and Albany, 
nearly midway between the two 

and about twentv miles from 
Kaunaumeek. J 

each. 2 He arrived there April 1, 
1743, and remained one year. 3 During that 
time he established a school for the children; 
by the aid of an interpreter 4 he preached. 
Some degree of religious interest was man- 
ifested by the Indians; reformation, to a cer- 
tain extent, especially in their drinking habits 
and superstitious practices, took place. But 



1 Spelled also by Brainerd, Caunaumuck. 

2 Note 23. 

3 He left March 14, 1744. 

4 John Kauwaumpegwunnaunt. 



DAVID BEAINEHD. 129 

the influence of unprincipled men, chiefly 
Dutch, calling themselves Christians, was bane- 
ful. By direction of the commissioners he 
spent a good deal of time with Sergeant in 
studying the difficult language, riding twenty 
miles through the trackless woods and encoun- 
tering a good many exposures. Once, at least, 
he was lost, and lay all night in the open air; 
once he fell into the river. He was able to 
compose sundry forms of prayer in the vernac- 
ular, so that he could pray with his people ; 
also sundry psalms, so that he could lead them 
in the service of song. 

Brainerd's surroundings were very unfavor- 
able. There was no English family within a 
score of miles. At first he was obliged to 
lodge two miles from the settlement, in a room 
made of logs, without a floor; his bed, a little 
heap of straw laid upon boards; his diet, 
chiefly boiled corn and bread baked in the 
ashes. Afterwards he moved into a comfort- 
less wigwam till he could build a shanty for 
himself. For bread he had to go or send ten 
or fifteen miles, which was sometimes mouldy 
and sometimes failed for days altogether. 

After Brainerd's eleven and one half months 
at Kaunaumeek the commissioners proposed that 
he should go to the tribe originally contem- 
plated,- the Delawares. The Indians at Kau- 
naumeek were few in number, and he wisely 



130 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

advised them to move to Stockbridge, where 
with their brethren they would be more ad- 
vantageously situated under the care of Mr. 
Sergeant. 

But will our missionary engage further and 
elsewhere in this line of labor? His health 
has already suffered seriously ; he had begun, 
indeed, to raise blood when in college. He 
has some private property; and, what is more, 
strong inducements to remain in his native 
colony were held out. He might have had an 
eligible settlement at Millington, a village near 
his birthplace. On his way from Kaunaumeek 
and its privations and perils he met a mes- 
senger from Easthampton bearing a unanimous 
. invitation to the pastorate of 
that place — then the largest, 
pleasantest, most wealthy of the parishes on 
Long Island. The people were acquainted 
with him, and had before that more than 
once expressed a similar wish. Was not such 
a repeated call to be accepted as the clear in- 
dication of divine Providence? Brainerd has 
devoted himself to the welfare of Indians, and 
thoughts of comfort, of ease, of agreeable so- 
ciety, weigh lightly with him. He deemed it 
the will of God that he should persevere in 
his self-denying purpose. Regarding all such 
matters he said later, "I would not have the 
choice to make for myself for ten thousand 



DAVID BEAINEED. 131 

worlds.'' Azariah Horton, his contemporary, 
had resisted a similar temptation. Gordon 
Hall and many another in the present century 
have met with similar inducements from the 
home field and have treated them in the same 
way. Lucrative positions in the employ of 
governments, literary labor, authorship, or a 
professorship may present temptations; but 
what then? Shall the man who has put his 
hand to the ministerial or missionary plow look 
back? 

By order of the commissioners Brainerd pro- 
ceeded to an Indian settlement at the forks 
of the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, near 
where Easton is now situated. It is seventy 
or more miles from New York City and fifty or 
more north of Philadelphia. He 
arrived May 13, 1744. A month Amon & 

. n . Delawares. 

later he received ordination by 
Presbytery at Newark, New Jersey. In Octo- 
ber of the same year he paid his first visit to 
Indians on the Susquehanna — distant one hun- 
dred and twenty miles — at a place where was 
a gathering of mixed tribes, speaking various 
languages and not giving promise of being 
easily reached by religious influence. The 
visit was repeated in each of the two suc- 
ceeding years (1745 and 1746). 

After laboring in Pennsylvania for more than 
a year he commenced preaching (June 5, 1745) 



132 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

at Crossweeksung, in New Jersey. The place, 
now known as Crosswicks, is about fifty miles 
southeast from the forks of the Delaware and 
about sixty southwest from New York. It was 
there that he met with his greatest success. 
One year later (May 3, 1746) he, with a body 
of Indians, removed to Cranberry, fifteen miles 
northwest from Crosswicks. 

We will now glance at some of the lim- 
itations which attended that period of labor 
among the Delawares. The amount of embar- 
rassment cannot be easily appreciated by us. 
At the middle of the last century only limited 
progress had been made in the construction of 
roads, and this was especially true as regards 
Indian settlements. Brainerd had a good deal 
of traveling to perform. His first journey into 
the Middle Colonies, from the 
neighborhood of Fishkill, on the 
Hudson, to the Delaware, he speaks of as 
"about a hundred miles through a desolate and 
hideous country." Later comes this record 
(November 22, 1743): "About six at night 
I lost my way in the wilderness, wandered 
over rocks and mountains, down hideous steeps, 
through swamps and most dreadful and danger- 
ous places. ... Was much pinched with cold 
and distressed with an extreme pain in my 
head, attended with sickness at my stomach, so 
that every step I took was distressing to me." 



DAVID BRAINERD. 133 

Nor was that a solitary instance of the kind. 
He lodged on the ground for several weeks 
together. One night spent thus in the woods 
he was overtaken by a northeasterly storm, and 
having no shelter came near perishing. Again, 
with nothing but some barks for a shelter he 
heard wolves howling around in the night. 
During one twelvemonth he traveled four 
thousand miles. 

His state of health is to be kept in mind. 
The journal makes mention of " no appetite ; " 
" distressing weakness ; " " extreme faintness ; " 
"full of pain;" "a cold sweat all night;" 
"coughing and spitting blood;" (i violent 
fever." Living as he did alone in a mere 
hut, without nurse or physician, with but few 
of the necessaries and none of the comforts of 
life, the only wonder is that his brief mis- 
sionary career was not yet briefer. 

Nor should the character of the Delawares 
be forgotten. Brainerd's heart was drawn out 
to them, yet he says : " They are in general 
unspeakably indolent and slothful. ... I am 
obliged to instruct them in, as well as press 
them to, the performance of their work, and 
take the oversight of all their secular business. 
They have little or no ambition or resolution. 
Not one in a thousand of them has the spirit 
of a man." Their hamlets were sparsely peo- 
pled, there being usually not more than two or 



134 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

three families in a place, and these small settle- 
ments were for the most part miles away from 
his headquarters. The roving disposition, which 
was general, did not, of course, favor religious 
instruction and influence. They became vehe- 
mently prejudiced — and not without reason — 
against those bearing the Christian name. Some 
of the European settlers in their neighborhood 
much preferred to have the Indians remain 
heathens, as they would then be their more 
easy prey ; otherwise, " the hope of their gain 
was gone." They represented Brainerd as a 
knave, as a papist who had come to incite 
them to insurrection against the English, or 
else to sell them as slaves. Naturally suspi- 
cious, the Indians had their fears thus played 
upon effectually. If our missionary had been 
master of the language he would have been in 
a far more favorable position to meet insinua- 
tions, to rebut charges, and to communicate 
religious instruction. But in the vernacular 
there was no Bible, no literature, and he had 
no adequate helps whatever. 

It would be superfluous to say that such a 
man, whose desire was, "O that I could be 
a flame of fire in the service of my God!" was 
indefatigable in labor. To preach and cate- 
chise, to give private instruction, to take care 
of their secular affairs as if they were so many 
children, to ride about frequently in order to 



DAVID BRAINERD. 135 

secure means for the support of the school, to 
decide petty differences among them, left no 
time for the study of the Indian languages. 

And how about the circumstances of his 
ministrations? In the cold season he had to 
preach in their wigwams, which were filled 
with smoke and intolerable filth, 
which would cause him violent 
sick headaches. Mothers would take no pains 
to quiet their crying children. Some in the 
little audience would be whittling sticks, some 
playing with the dogs, and some mocking at 
divine things. 

It should be added that as occasion seemed 
to require he employed his own private means 
judiciously in aid of the Indians. His salary 
was forty pounds (two hundred dollars) a year. 
In less than three years he spent fifteen hun- 
dred dollars of his own means, additional to 
the salary, for mission purposes. A favorable 
beginning, however, in the line of civilization 
was made. He induced a portion of the tribe 
— as previously indicated — to settle in a more 
compact manner and to undertake agriculture 
with some degree of system ; but the plowing, 
planting, fence-building, and other operations 
Brainerd had to oversee himself. 

Before the close of his labor at Crossweek- 
sung a schoolmaster came upon the ground, 
who, after five months, testified that the chil- 



136 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

dren — thirty or more — learned with surprising 
readiness; that he had never had an English 
school comparable to this, some of the pupils 
being able within the time named to read the 
English Psalter or New Testament without 
pausing to spell the words. Twice a week 
they were instructed in the Assembly s Cate- 
chism, and in the course of the first four 
months some of them were able to repeat con- 
siderably more than half of it by heart. 

Keeping in mind the environment by which 
he was hampered, what success in that chief 
object which he had in view could this invalid 
expect amidst those savages during his short 
period of activity? No pause need be made 
to speak of labor, occasional and incidental, 
among the Dutch, Germans, and Irish, which 
was a blessing to those sheep without a shep- 
herd. Brainerd as a missionary 

Success. J 

to the Delawares gave heart and 
strength unreservedly to them. His great aim, 
his burning desire, was to save souls. Would 
it have been strange or unprecedented if no 
appreciable religious impression had been made? 
Usually the more degraded a people are the 
less susceptible they are to a sense of guilt. 
Acute conviction of sin, vivid joy upon a dis- 
covery of saving grace through Christ Jesus, 
and lively religious emotions in general are 
found for the most part only where there is 



DAYID BEAINEED. 137 

some advance in civilization and where the 
great truths of Christianity have for a longer 
time been inculcated. Brainerd held a careful 
pen. Before full three months after his arrival 
at the forks of the Delaware were passed he 
noticed appearances of religious concern among 
the Indians. Before five months had gone by 
several came of their own accord to talk about 
their souls' concerns ; some, with tears, inquired 
"what they should do to be saved." Before 
the seven months of that year (1744) were 
completed his interpreter, as well as others, 
was under conviction of sin. One old man, 
apparently a hundred years of age, wept and 
seemed deeply convinced of the importance of 
what he had heard. 

We now follow him to Crossweeksung. We 
bear in mind that the Delawares are still sav- 
ages, improvident, heedless of the future, stolid, 
apathetic. Tenderness and humane emotions 
are little known among them. "But," says 
Brainerd, "the impressions made 
upon their hearts appeared chiefly ^ eviva 

r rir J Experiences. 

by the extraordinary earnestness 
of their attention and their heavy sighs and 
tears." On one occasion there were only two 
persons with dry eyes. Conscience was aroused, 
and conviction of sin took hold of them. A 
"woman appeared in great distress for her soul. 
She was brought to such agony in seeking after 



138 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

Christ that the sweat ran off her face for a con- 
siderable time together (although the evening 
was very cold), and her bitter cries were the 
most affecting indications of her heart." 1 All 
classes were moved. No wonder the missionary 
should remark, "It was very affecting to see 
the poor Indians, who the other day were hal- 
looing and yelling in their idolatrous feasts and 
drunken frolics, now crying to God with such 
importunity for an interest in his dear Son." 

May not this have been mere animal excite- 
ment, the contagion of superficial, ignorant 
alarm? The constant aim of our missionary 
was not to appeal to the feelings but to the 
understanding, and to present only sober, essen- 
tial truth. He remarks: "Hence their concern 
in general was most rational and just. Those 
who had been awakened any considerable time 
complained more especially of their hearts" 
Take a specimen: A woman "had been angry 
with her child the evening before, and was now 
exercised with fears lest her anger had been 
inordinate and sinful, which so grieved her 
that she waked and began to sob before day- 
light and continued weeping for several hours 
together." It should be kept in mind that 
Brainerd was a man of discriminating judg- 
ment in regard to spiritual exercises; that he 



Note 24. 



DAVID BRAINERD. 139 

knowingly gave no encouragement to nervous 
agitations ; that he discountenanced mere rhap- 
sodic and other enthusiastic manifestations. 

What now were some of the tokens confirm- 
atory of the statement above? Prayerfulness is 
one. When leaving them, for example, on a 
journey to the Susquehanna, before sunset they 
began and continued praying till near break oi* 
day, never mistrusting till they went out and 
saw the morning star at a considerable height 
that it was later than bedtime. 

n t r, ,« t ,. Genuine Work. 

Dread of seli-deception was an- 
other token. Was it said in the early days 
of our era, "Behold how these Christians love 
one another?" That might well have been said 
at Crossweeksung. "I know of no assembly 
of Christians," writes Brainerd, "where there 
seems to be so much of the presence of God, 
where brotherly love so much prevails, and 
where I should take so much delight in the 
public worship of God in general as in my 
own congregation, although not more than 
nine months ago under the power of pagan 
darkness and superstition." 

The main point here is, What was actually 
accomplished by this young consumptive mis- 
sionary, single-handed and in so short a term 
of service? Neither he nor our holy religion 
was responsible for a later sad history of 
aboriginal tribes, nor do we need to tarry 



140 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

here in order to descant upon the cupidity 
and manifold iniquity of white men. Testi- 
monials from other sources were hardly re- 
quired; yet ministers — William Tennent, of 
Freehold, one of them — and church officers 
living comparatively near Brainerd's field of 
operations, and having personal acquaintance 
therewith, volunteered warm attestations to the 
remarkable character of the results. One of 
them wrote, "I am for my part fully per- 
suaded that this glorious work is true and 
genuine, while with satisfaction I behold sev- 
eral of these Indians, discovering all the symp- 
toms of inward holiness in their lives and con- 
versation." The year after Brainerd's decease 
(1748) a competent witness visiting Bethel, 
the Indian settlement at Cranberry, writes: 
"The state and circumstances of the Indians, 
spiritual and temporal, much exceed what 
I expected. Notwithstanding my expectations 
were very much raised from Mr. David Brai- 
nerd's journal and from particular information 
from him, yet I must confess that in many 
respects they are not equal to that which 
now appears to me to be true concerning 
the glorious work of divine grace among the 
Indians." * 

After all is it to be supposed that a tribe so 



1 Rev. Job Strong : Life of John Brainerd, 144. 



DAVID BRAINEED. 141 

rude, so sunk in superstition, so enslaved by 
traditions and a dark heredity, can in a short 
time become the subjects of anything more 
than transient impressions? Did a radical 
change of character and life result? Trans- 
formation came and was indeed sudden. Brai- 
nerd says, " The pagans who were awakened 
seemed at once to put off their savage rough- 
ness and pagan manners, and became sociable, 
orderly, and humane in their 
carriage." " This day (July 19, 
1746) makes up a complete year from the 
first time of my preaching to these Indians 
in New Jersey. What amazing things has 
God wrought in this space of time for this 
poor people ! What a surprising change ap- 
pears in their tempers and behavior ! How 
are morose and savage pagans in this short 
period transformed into agreeable, affectionate, 
and humble Christians, and their drunken and 
pagan howlings turned into devout and fervent 
praises to God?" 

One incident reminds us of what occurred 
at Ephesus, "Many of them also which used 
curious arts brought their books together and 
burned them before all men." Brainerd re- 
cords: "It was likewise remarkable that this 
day (August 25, 1745) an old Indian, who had 
all his days been an idolater, was brought to 
give up his rattles — which they use for music 



142 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

in their idolatrous feasts and dances — to the 
other Indians, who quickly destroyed them. 
This was done without any attempt of mine 
in the affair." Did the apostles on their 
evangelistic tours take with them young con- 
verts as assistants? Our missionary's earlier 
efforts in Pennsylvania having been but par- 
tially successful, at a later date (February 16, 
1746) he took with him half a dozen from 
Crossweeksung, who did effective service. 1 

What were the numerical results of Brai- 
nerd's labor? It will be recollected that the 
Delawares, so far as accessible by him, were 
not numerous. Toward the close of his first 
year among them he had baptized thirty-eight 
adults; but he baptized no adults except such 
as appeared to have a work of grace wrought 
in their hearts. At one time he speaks of 
eighty as either inquirers or apparently con- 
verted. It was probably the progress of 
disease and consequent bodily weakness that 
prevented a closing statistical review of labor 
among the Delawares. 

A question of no small historical and prac- 
tical importance here presents itself: What 
were Brainerd's chief methods? Two leading 
features are obvious. The first is the evan- 
gelical truths which he inculcated. We listen 



1 Note 25. 



DAVID BRAINERD. 143 

once more : " I have frequently been enabled 
to represent the divine glory, the infinite pre- 
ciousness, and transcendent loveliness of the 
great Redeemer, the suitableness of his person 
and purchase to supply the wants and answer 
the utmost desires of immortal souls ; to open 
the infinite riches of his grace and the wonder- 
ful encouragement proposed in the gospel to 
unworthy, helpless sinners; to call, „ , , 

.,,,-, Methods. 

invite, and beseech them to come 
and give up themselves to him and be recon- 
ciled to God through him ; to expostulate with 
them respecting their neglect of one so infi- 
nitely lovely and freely offered; and this in 
such a manner, with such freedom, pertinency, 
pathos, and application to the conscience as 
I am sure I never could have made myself 
master of by the most assiduous application 
of mind." "God was pleased to give these 
divine truths such a powerful influence upon 
the minds of these people, and so to bless 
them for the effectual awakening of numbers 
of them, that their lives were quickly reformed, 
without my insisting upon the precepts of mo- 
rality and spending time in repeated harangues 
upon external duties." 

Such were the Scripture truths enforced 
by Brainerd — the momentous facts of prime 
moment to every man, savage and civilized 
alike — the preaching of which has ever been 



144 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

mighty to the pulling down of strongholds and 
stirring those depths of the soul which need to 
be stirred. Like the apostles he did not wait 
for the slow processes of school education, but 
addressed himself first of all and mainly to 
adults. 

The other chief element of Brainerd's power 

as a missionary was his pray erf ulness. That 

habit characterized him from the earliest period 

of his religious life. Before entering upon 

, , work among the Indians his iour- 

Prayerfulness. . J 

nal contains memoranda such as 
these : " God enabled me so to agonize in 
prayer that I was quite wet with perspiration, 
though in the shade and the cool wind. My 
soul was drawn out very much from the world 
for multitudes of souls." 1 Once entered upon 
labor in behalf of the red men he says: "My 
great concern was for the conversion of the 
heathen to God, and the Lord helped me to 
speak for them." "Praying incessantly every 
moment with sweet fervency." "I feel as if 
my all was lost and I was undone for this 
world if the poor heathen may not be con- 
verted." "In prayer I was exceedingly en- 
larged." "Spent a great part of the day 
(December 19, 1744) in prayer to God for the 
outpouring of his Spirit on my poor people." 



x Note 26. 



DAVID BEAINEED. 145 

In journeying from place to place, before preach- 
ing and after preaching, and even in his dreams 
supplication for individuals and for the people 
at large was the business of his heart. As a 
prince he had power with God and with men. 
Such a wrestler could not but prevail. His 
faith removed mountains. The student or mis- 
sionary who receives no impulse to prayer, to 
self-scrutiny, to heartiest consecration, from a 
perusal of Brainerd's memoir must either have 
made very rare attainments in the divine life 
or else have very languid aspirations. Given 
such preaching and praying by all ministers 
and missionaries, how long before the world 
would be converted? 

Owing to the progress of pulmonary con- 
sumption he was compelled to leave the work 
in 1747. Deducting the time occupied by two 
short visits to New England, by other short 
absences, and the weeks during which he was 
laid aside owing to sickness — at one time con- 
fined nearly four months — there 

1,1, t Brief Period, 

remain less than two ye^rs and 

a half for actual labor among the Delawares. 
Enough is known to authorize the statement 
that since apostolic days there has probably 
not been a case in which, all things consid- 
ered, such religious results have attended the 
brief labors of a solitary missionary among 
pagan men of the woods. It was nearly six 



146 PKOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

years after his arrival in Burmah before Judson 
baptized a convert; seven years before Mora- 
vians rejoiced over a converted Greenlander; 
fifteen years before the pioneer band — thirty in 
number — of the London society's mission to 
the South Seas were cheered by a conversion 
on Tahiti; and a quarter of a century before 
Rhenish missionaries among the Hereroes of 
South Western Africa began to gather fruit 
from their sowing. 

During Brainerd's four years of missionary 
life he had no comfortable home. At different 
places of sojourn he successively built for him- 
self a cabin, in each instance rude and most 
scantily furnished. Suitable food, medicine, 
and nursing were rare. Great exposures were 
frequent; hardships constant; debility and sick- 
ness inevitable. Hectic fever, night sweats, and 
hemorrhages from the lungs were 
a natural consequence. Few men 
so reduced in bodily strength would have re- 
mained as long at their post. March 20, 1747, 
occurred his last interview with the Delawares, 
though not at the time supposed by him to be 
such. After the expiration of nearly a month 
from that date he left New Jersey; and, hop- 
ing still for improved health, proceeded by slow 
stages to New England, and after a month's 
time arrived at Northampton. One object was 
to consult a physician in that place. A part 



DAVID BRAINERD. 147 

of June and July was spent in Boston. Re- 
turning to Northampton and to the house of 
President Edwards, he continued to suffer and 
to fail. The longed-for departure came Octo- 
ber 9, 1747. Anticipating the event, he often 
called it " that glorious day ! " 

In our day a distinguished French artist x at 
twenty-nine was decorated with the badge of 
the Legion of Honor; a century before that 
David Brain erd at the same age, 2 amidst ten 
thousand times ten thousand and thousands of 
thousands, received the crown of glory that 
fadeth not away. 



1 Paul Gustave Dore. 

2 Note 27. 



148 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 



DANISH MISSIONS. 



LECTURE VII. — TRANQUEBAR MISSION". 

Denmark, though territorially so small, has 
eminence in four things. Her population is 
said to be better supplied with Bibles than 
that of any other country ; her government 
was the first in Europe to furnish education 
for the whole people, and is today expending 
more per capita for that purpose than any 
other nation in the old world; she was the 
first to proscribe the slave trade: and the first 
on the Continent, in the eighteenth century, to 
send missionaries to the heathen. It was, how- 
ever, in Germany that the revived evangelical 
spirit two hundred years ago took its rise, and 
out of that revival arose foreign missions. The 
first missionaries and a large majority of their 
successors in the early Danish movement were 
from Germany; funds for their support to no 
inconsiderable amount were supplied from the 
same source, while the really directing mind 
of that enterprise was also, in Germany. It 



DANISH MISSIONS. 149 

might therefore be suitably denominated Ger- 

mano-Danish. 

Our attention may well be drawn to that 

little kingdom by an ancestral interest. Not 

more truly is England our mother country 

than Denmark is a mother country of the 

English. Thence came the language, the name, 

and the invading race — Angles — with whom, 

in the fifth century, begins the history of the 

English people — English as distinguished from 

antecedent British. With the bold Angles — 

a name still found in the duchy of Holstein 

— was early associated a neigh- 

, i i • i i • Anglo-Saxons. 

boring people, kindred in race 

and speech, and hence arose the designation 
Anglo-Saxons. In that primeval homestead, 
that England older than Old England, is an 
early historic fountain of the blood now cours- 
ing through our veins. Present Anglo-Saxon 
enterprise, whether maritime or evangelistic, 
had its counterpart at that period when the 
Northmen became a terror in nearly all the 
waters of Europe, establishing a place for them- 
selves in France, plundering Paris, and giving 
their name to Normandy; pushing their way 
up the Guadalquivir; measuring prowess with 
the Moors of Spain ; sacking Seville ; founding 
a new kingdom in Naples; and assisting in the 
capture of Sidon. They were " the Arabs of 
the deep." Such was the terror inspired gen- 



150 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

erally by the Vikings during this long preda- 
tory period that in the ninth century these 
words were added to the Litany, "From the 
rage of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us ! " * 
Early in the eleventh century the Danes, hav- 
ing conquered a part of Scotland and the 
whole of England, set their own king (Ca- 
nute) on the throne, and he became the most 
powerful monarch of his time. At the close of 
the fourteenth century Denmark ranked among 
the leading powers of Europe — Margaret, the 
Semiramis of the North, having by her courage 
and address united the three crowns of Den- 
mark, Sweden, and Norway. 

Frederick IV, whose name stands connected 
with the earliest Protestant mission of the 
eighteenth century, came to the throne in 1699. 
He found the treasury exhausted, commerce 

crippled, and the kingdom labor- 
Frederick IV. . , u j.nn -,,. XT- 

ing under heavy difficulties. His 
struggle with Charles XII of Sweden, that 
thunderbolt of war, only increased embarrass- 
ments. But the Spirit of God was at work 
preparing the way for a movement that should 
mark an epoch in the history of Protestantism. 
Already while crown prince the king had re- 
flected on the condition of the heathen, and 
since coming to the throne he had consulted 
his spiritual adviser, Dr. Jespersen, in regard 

1 A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine. 



DANISH MISSIONS. 151 

to sending Christian laborers among his Finnish 
subjects in Lapland. " Kings shall be thy nurs- 
ing fathers " was predicted of old ; and today 
the saying may be heard in Denmark when 
anything noble or beautiful takes place, " This 
proceeds from the king." 

But how came Frederick's thoughts to move 
in the direction of India ? The wealth flowing 
to other nations of Europe from the East India 
trade had, a century before, stimulated the 
enterprise of Denmark also, and in spite of 
numerous failures she made repeated attempts 
to find a northwest passage to Eastern Asia. 
At length the domination of Roman Catholic 
powers, especially Portugal, began to wane. 1 
The Danes, as well as the Dutch, relinquishing 
the long cherished idea of a highway to In- 
dia through Behring Strait, and accepting the 
route by the Cape of Good Hope, acquired 
colonial possessions in the East. In the year 
1621 Denmark purchased from the Rajah of 
Tanjore a permanent footing on the Coroman- 
del Coast, and the mind of any one on the 
throne might well be impressed with a sense 
of obligation to his pagan subjects. 

The immediate occasion of this new move- 
ment was a widow's distress. One evening in 
the month of March, 1705, Frederick sits read- 



1 Alex J. D. D'Orsey : Portuguese Discoveries, Dependencies, and 
Missions in Asia and Africa. London, 1893. 



152 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

ing petitions from his people. Among them is 
one from a widow whose husband and eldest 
son, belonging to the garrison at Tranquebar, 
have been murdered by the natives. She asks 
aid for herself and her five remaining children. 
The king affords help ; but immediately sends 
for his chaplain, Dr. Liitkens, whom 
he had called the year before from 
Berlin, to consult with him about a mission to 
India. The good man enters warmly into the 
plan, and, though in a time of war, he is com- 
missioned to look out for candidates. They 
are not, however, to be found in Denmark. 1 
The new spiritual life, reproachfully termed 
" Pietism," having Halle for its center, was felt 
but slightly in this neighboring kingdom; and 
Frederick authorized his court preacher, who 
had been his religious instructor in youth, to 
seek missionaries elsewhere. Dr. Liitkens' ac- 
quaintance in Germany led to a correspondence 
which brought to light two young graduates 
from Halle — Henry Plutschau and 
__. First . Bartholomew Ziegenbalg. In 1811 

Missionaries. ° & 

the American Board sent to Eng- 
land for pecuniary cooperation; a century ear- 
lier Denmark sent to Germany for men. 

The parents of Ziegenbalg died when he was 
young. One incident of his mother's last days 
he could never forget. Gathering the family 



Note 29. 



DANISH MISSIONS. 153 

round her bed she said, "Dear children, I have 
a great treasure for you — a very great treas- 
ure have I collected for you." The eldest 
daughter asked where it was. "Seek it in 
the Bible, my dear children," answered the dy- 
ing woman; "there you will find it. I have 
watered every page with my tears." The first 
Protestant mission to India originated in the 
heart of a praying mother. " There is a river 
the streams whereof shall make glad the city 
of God." The death of Ziegenbalg's father 
was also attended by noteworthy circumstances. 
A fire broke out in the place of his residence 
— Pulsnitz, a town sixteen miles northwest 
from Dresden — and reached the house where 
he lay unable to move. In their agitation 
friends could think of no way to remove the 
helpless man except by placing him in the 
coffin which for some time had been in readi- 
ness, and being thus carried out to the market 
place he died there. 

In childhood Ziegenbalg exhibited unusual 
seriousness. As a youth he maintained habits 
of devotion which made him the target of 
ridicule for his schoolmates. Visiting various 
universities he nowhere found students like- 
minded with himself nor teachers so faithful 
as at Halle. From 1694 to 1730 that was the 
leading German university, and at the time of 
Ziegenbalg's stay there it was the focus of 



154 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

a spiritual revival. In conversation one day 
Francke said to him regarding the heathen of 
India, " If one can truly lead a soul to God 
from amongst that people it is as much as 
winning a hundred in Europe, for these latter 
have each day means and opportunities suffi- 
cient for their conversion, while the former 
are entirely without them." That remark made 
a lasting impression upon him. He and a 
friend of his, Yon der Linde, entered into a 
covenant, as follows : " We will seek nothing 
else in the world but the glory of God's name, 
the spread of God's kingdom, the propagation 
of divine truth, the salvation of our neighbor, 
and the constant sanctification of our own 
souls, wherever we may be and whatever of 
cross-bearing and suffering it may occasion us." 
Study was much interrupted by ill health, 
for he suffered from bodily weakness ; yet he 
and Pliitschau, his friend at the university, 
had become known by their acquirements, their 
piety, and their traits of character as qualified 
for such an undertaking in the distant East. 
It is one of the noticeable coincidences, often 
recurring in the history of missions, that Pro- 
fessor Francke, the founder of the Orphan 
House at Halle, had just been conferring with 
Ziegenbalg in regard to personal service among 
the heathen when the unlooked-for inquiry 
came from Copenhagen. 



DANISH MISSIONS. 155 

To become pioneers at that time was a very 
different thing from what it is now to make 
an offer of foreign service. No healthful gen- 
eral sentiment on the subject existed. The 
charge of presumption had to be met, for 
not till years after Ziegenbalg's death did the 
labors of Eliot and the Mayhews 
become known in Germany. 1 More 
trying still, the young men were pronounced 
enthusiasts and fools. But their purpose was 
not to be shaken. Commended to the king 
and to his worthy chaplain the two students 
went to Denmark, were ordained, and sailed 
(November 29, 1705) for the East Indies. The 
enterprise might be further denominated Dano- 
Hallensian. 

It should not be imagined that at the capital 
any general interest was felt in this movement. 
Nor should too favorable an inference be drawn 
regarding the religious character of Frederick IV. 
The fact that Cyrus liberated the chosen people 
did not prove him to be a worshiper of the true 
God. Pope Gregory the Great, who bought 
Anglo-Saxon youths at the slave market to edu- 
cate them as missionaries for Britain, and who 
sent zealous Augustine on the same errand, was 
not altogether a model of piety. Frederick, 
while not upon so low a level as the average 



1 Professor Nitzsch, in Piper's Zeugen der Warheit, I, p. 613. 



156 PKOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

of contemporary monarchs, is not reported to 
have been a faultless man. 1 Nor was the sen- 
timent of Copenhagen very deeply religious. 
No crowded audiences gave the young men 
welcome or farewell. With few exceptions 
people looked upon the missionaries as enthusi- 
asts. The thought of effort to save others, and 
especially the heathen, was remote from the 
general mind. Self-seeking ruled the day. In 
Heligoland, not far from the track of our mis- 
sionaries' outward voyage, the inhabitants sub- 
sisted in part by wrecking, and their pastor, 
even down to the present century, prayed every 
Sabbath morning for a fresh supply of ship- 
wrecks. 2 On the nineteenth of July, 1706, the 
two missionaries reached their destined haven, 
after a voyage of two hundred and twenty- 
three days, including a short stop at the Cape 
of Good Hope. 

Tranquebar, at that time a Danish possession, 
on the Coromandel Coast, was the merest foot- 
hold. It had an area of only fifteen square 
miles, with a fortified seaport and 
about twenty smaller towns or vil- 
lages within the district. The population was 
not far from fifteen thousand. One hundred 
and forty miles southwest from Madras, it is 



1 Schlosser : History of the Eighteenth Century. Translated. 
London, 1845. 

2 Hurst's Life and Literature in the Fatherland, p. 392. 



DANISH MISSIONS. 157 

situated at the mouth of one branch of the 
Cavery, that sacred stream which traverses My- 
sore, and then, visiting the Carnatic, imparts 
productiveness there — the very Nile of the 
peninsula. Its delta is unsurpassed in fer- 
tility by any other on the globe. 

This is India, and yet of that vast territory 
only a fraction. Survey that enormous triangle, 
nearly equilateral, each side not far short of 
two thousand miles — an area equal to Europe; 
equal to the United States east of the Rocky 
Mountains. The southern apex (Cape Comorin) 
is as far from the Himalayas as 
Gibraltar is from Iceland. Within 
these boundaries are found one in every five of 
the entire present population of our globe, one 
country alone having a larger number. The 
Roman Empire in its widest extent never had 
half as many millions as are here congregated. 
Politically India is not a country, but a con- 
geries of countries. You may count consider- 
ably more than one hundred separate states, to 
which the imperial government of Great Britain 
holds relations of varying supervision. Racial 
differences are numerous, and all grades of civ- 
ilization are found here. Would you communi- 
cate with the people in all their vernaculars? 
Your polyglot will not fall short of two hun- 
dred languages, including dialects. Traversing 
India you will find it the land of peacocks, of 



158 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

elephants, of tigers, of lions too ; hence such 
titles as Singe, Lion, and the like. It is also 
the land of serpents. Official returns show 
that from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand 
of the inhabitants are annually victims of wild 
beasts, crocodiles, and deadly snakes. Few of 
the more valuable productions of any climate 
can be named which are not found here. 
Wherever practicable, rice is cultivated — the 
article which sustains a greater number of hu- 
man beings than any other plant and which 
yields to the acre the largest amount of nutri- 
ment. India is preeminently the land of palms, 
that are unsurpassed in gracefulness and beauty. 
Nowhere else does the banyan attain such di- 
mensions. There is one in Guzerat under the 
canopy of which five regiments of soldiers may 
find complete shelter from the sun's rays. The 
circuit of its outer stems measures two thou- 
sand feet. Quot rami, tot arhores. 

India has immemorially enriched the West. 
To have its carrying trade has always been a 
guaranty of wealth. Herodotus, a contempo- 
rary of Nehemiah, reported it as the most opu- 
lent country in the world. Its foreign trade 
in our day is fifty-five million dollars a year. 
India has long been known as the land of gold, 
though it has no mines of that precious metal. 
Better than such, the balance of trade has uni- 
formly been in her favor. Reputed riches have 



DANISH MISSIONS. 159 

long tempted the trader and the invader. Fol- 
low np the Ganges through the region of Hin- 
dustan proper to the great rocky barrier and 
its Khyber Pass, the northwest gate to India; 
through that Alexander led his Macedonian 
troops, three hundred years before Christ, and 
through that have since poured not less than 
seven eventful invasions. 

Over this land, where the sun shine th in his 
strength, there broods a hoary antiquity. Be- 
fore the first step toward the foundation of 
Rome was taken — indeed before Abraham built 
his first altar in Canaan — the Rig-Veda was a 
religious authority in India. While our remote 
ancestors were still rude barbarians in Great 
Britain civilized men were here mounted on 
elephants, were living in palaces, and possessed 
of a literature which Western scholars of today 
are exploring with wonder. India has imme- 
morially stimulated the Occidental imagination. 
The fascination is not yet wholly dissipated. 

At Tranquebar — which in size is related to 
the rest of India as Denmark is to the conti- 
nent of Europe — was established the first per- 
manent Protestant mission on this widespread 
mainland. The previous history of these Danes 
in the line of evangelization in the East was not 
particularly creditable. During the war waged 
between them and their neighbors in Bengal it 
was a common practice to treat the crews of 



160 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

captured privateers as slaves; to baptize them, 
and then sell them at a price varying from 
five to ten piasters apiece. 

While we accord to Denmark priority in 
establishing a stable mission to the heathen of 
continental India, we at the same time raise 
the question, Why had she, a Christian power, 
held this possession full .fourscore years without 
evangelizing her Hindu subjects? It is small 
relief to hear in reply that England had, even 
for a century, been guilty of similar remissness. 

Ziegenbalg and Pliitschau not going out in 
the employ of a voluntary society nor of a 
church board, but with a commission bearing 
the sign manual of the king, it might be ex- 
pected that their reception would have at least 
the forms of courtesy. So far from that there 
was positive unkindness. After 

„ a . r y landing thev were left for hours 

Experiences. . 

under a burning sun just outside 
the gates and then in the market place. But 
they had an interest with the King of kings. 
"For, as we had no human being," say they, 
" near us of whom we could ask advice as to 
how this or that should be begun, we went 
always to our dear Father in heaven and laid 
everything before him in prayer, and we were 
heard and supported by him both in advice 
and in deed." They had been students under 
Francke, whose motto was, Ora et labora. 



DANISH MISSIONS. 161 

The climate is enervating. The Carnatic 
is the most intensely tropical part of India. 
They had come to a region where Brahmanism 
was more imperious than in almost any other 
district and Romanism no less unscrupulous 
than elsewhere, and where, by their own coun- 
trymen, their work was deemed visionary. In- 
deed, an attempt to Christianize the natives 
was regarded as intrusive. Even the Danish 
chaplain looked coldly upon these Christian 
brethren. They had few precedents, except in 
the Acts of the Apostles. They addressed 
themselves as soon as practicable to the study 
of Tamil, the chief language of that region. 
Dictionaiy and grammar did not exist nor 
competent native teachers. The Portuguese — 
the first Europeans to secure possessions there 
— had left their language, as well as numerous 
descendants, behind them — the one about as 
mixed and corrupt as the other. The Indo- 
Portuguese dialect and the purer language of 
Portuguese literature our missionaries endeav- 
ored to master, that they might make them- 
selves useful to that portion of the people. 

After months of disappointing efforts to break 
through the barriers that hedged in the Tamil 
they took a native school, with its master, into 
their house ; and they might be seen sitting 
on the ground among the children, tracing 
with them letters, syllables, and words in the 



162 PKOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

sand. 1 Mastery of the vernacular should aP 
ways be the first endeavor of a missionary. 
Ziegenbalg began a dictionary which, in the 
course of two years, contained twenty thousand 
words and expressions — one column in Tamil 
character, one in Roman style, and a third the 
meaning in German. Four years 
later it had grown to forty thou- 
sand words and phrases. The vernacular liter- 
ature of India is chiefly in the form of poetry, 
and Ziegenbalg constructed a poetical lexicon 
of seventeen thousand words and phrases — not, 
however, without the aid of native amanuenses. 
Before the close of the year after their ar- 
rival they began to catechise in Portuguese, 
and at the beginning of the next year in 
Tamil. They opened a school in German for 
the benefit of Europeans who understood that 
language. Early in their work this record was 
made, "If the Lord shall be pleased to grant 
us the conversion of but one soul among the 
heathens we shall think our voyage sufficiently 
rewarded " — a thought repeatedly expressed. 
Ten months from the time they set foot on 
the coast of India the first baptism took place 
(May, 1707), when five slaves, after undergoing 
examination, received that ordinance. Many 
slaves were held by the Danes and Germans, 
as it was no unusual thing for the natives in 



Note 30. 



DANISH MISSIONS. 163 

times of great scarcity to sell themselves for 
food and raiment. 

Better accommodation for worship was now 
needed; the ship, however, which had come in 
brought neither funds nor an encouraging word. 
But Ziegenbalg was a man of strong faith. 
" We begin," he writes, " in great poverty, but 
in firm trust and confidence in God, to build 
in a great street in the city." "Many mocked 
at us, but some were moved to pity and to 
helping us." Two months after laying the 
corner stone they dedicated (August 7, 1707) 
their new place of worship — the earliest Prot- 
estant chapel for natives on the continent of 
Asia, as the one erected more than a century 
later (1822) at Bombay by missionaries of the 
American Board was the first on the west 
coast of India. 1 

The two missionaries now began to preach 
twice every Sunday, both in Tamil and Portu- 
guese, besides holding catechetical exercises on 
several days of the week. 2 They had also 
opened schools. Their heart was in the work. 
" We cannot express," say they, " what a tender 
love we bear toward our new planted congre- 
gations. Nay, our love is arrived to that de- 
gree, and our forwardness to serve this nation 

1 Note 31. 

2 Pliitschau, as well as Griindler, afterwards preached in 
Portuguese. 



164 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

is come to that pitch, that we are resolved to 
live and die with them." Their engagement 
was for only five years. 

At length, in the midsummer of 1708, a ship 
arrived from Denmark, bringing only half the 
promised amount of funds; but a part of the 
cargo, in being landed, through the careless- 
ness of drunken sailors went to the bottom 
and with it the thousand rix-dollars of mission 
money, never to be recovered. The hostile com- 
mandant and his attaches only jeered, saying 
they had always been right in declaring that 
heaven was high above the missionaries' heads 
and Copenhagen very far away ! 
Disappoint- The Danish £a c ials and most of 

ments. 

the European residents at Tranque- 
bar had gone there for worldly purposes, and 
the mere presence and evangelical faithfulness 
of such men as these missionaries were a silent 
rebuke to the ungodly. The commandant and 
the whole privy council maintained opposition 
and seemed bent upon crushing the good work. 
Ziegenbalg felt constrained to appeal directly 
to King Frederick for protection in his own 
behalf and in behalf of the congregation, which, 
within less than three years, had increased to 
one hundred souls, besides the candidates for 
baptism. One royal order after another was 
sent out enjoining favor toward the mission, 
but in vain. 



DANISH MISSIONS. 165 

"In perils by mine own countrymen." Zie- 
genbalg was unjustly thrown into prison, con- 
fined there for four months, and so closely 
guarded that no outsider could get access to 
him. During the first month of confinement 
even pen and ink were denied him. But the 
One who stood by Paul and Silas at Philippi, 
by Judson at Ava, by Worcester and Butler 
in the penitentiary of Georgia, stood by Ziegen- 
balg in the Danish dungeon at Tranquebar. 
The injured man showed a forgiving spirit. 
Whatever else might be refused he could not 
be denied the luxury of praying for his perse- 
cutors. If they would go to the 

r. . . , -. t Maltreatment. 

extreme 01 injury he would go 
to the extreme of love. Thus he conquered 
the commandant, whose "name was Hassius, a 
Norwegian by birth. Released from confine- 
ment, the injured man found his congregation 
scattered — intimidation and persecution having 
done their work — and he must begin anew. 
But the cruel proceeding was overruled for 
good. " Our imprisonment," Ziegenbalg wrote, 
"has been as a bell ringing far and wide 
throughout Europe to awaken many thousand 
souls to compassionate us and our young and 
growing community." 

At length friendly letters, remittances of 
money, and John Ernest Griindler, as a rein- 
forcement, arrived (1709). He, too, had taken 



166 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

his degree at Halle. He conceived so ardent a 
desire to carry the gospel to the heathen that 
he was ready to go out at his own charges 
if no other way presented. Polycarp Jordan, a 
fellow student, did follow at his own expense. 
Though a German, Griindler, like his two pred- 
ecessors, went to Copenhagen for ordination, 
together with John Bovingh, who was one of 
a reenforcement, but he proved a marplot in 
the mission. Griindler, truly happy in his 
work, became one of the ablest of Christian 
laborers. This excellent man sur- 
vived his friend * Ziegenbalg only 
a year, and the tombs of the two 
are on opposite sides of the altar in the Jeru- 
salem Church at Tranquebar, as the remains 
of Luther and Melanchthon, similarly disposed, 
lie in the old Castle Church at Wittenberg. 

Not only was a reenforcement of ordained 
men sent out, but also a printing press — funds 
being furnished by friends in England — and a 
German printer. The ship which carried press 
and printer, sailing from England (1711), was 
captured by a privateer at Rio de Janeiro and 
the cargo seized, but the printing press, being 
stored away in the hold, escaped. In a simi- 
lar way, at the close of the century, the Lon- 
don Missionary Society's ship, the Duff, suffered 



1 Beide waren in Wahrheit ein Herz und eine Seele. C. C. J. 
Schmidt. Ill, p. 123. 



DANISH MISSIONS. 167 

capture by the privateer Bonaparte on the 
South American Coast. This press was the 
first set up by Protestant Christians in Hin- 
dustan > (1710). 

Ziegenbalg's zeal could not be restricted to 
the narrow territory of Tranquebar. Dressed 
in native costume, like William Chalmers Burns 
and others more recently in China, he made 
excursions, visiting Madras and Nagapatam, and 
devoting more or less time to labors at Cudda- 
lore beneath the banyan where 
now stand a mission house and 1&s A er \ a e s 

Ardor. 

church. He endeavored to obtain 
admittance to Tanjore, but the Danes had 
shown such intense greed of gain as effectually 
prejudiced the natives against his approach. 
Wherever practicable he exerted himself in be- 
half of heathens, Mohammedans, and Catholics. 
There was a touch of Martin Luther about 
him. Malignant opposition of Romanists made 
the Tranquebar missionary cry out in prayer: 
" May the Lord of hosts, whose work we de- 
sign to promote, perfect us and gather unto 
himself at last a church and peculiar people 
from among this wild multitude of heathens ! 
And then let the Devil and his infernal herd 
rage against it to the utmost; we know there 
is an overruling Power confining him to such 



Note 32. 



168 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

boundaries as lie will not be able to pass." 
Bold, ardent, courageous, and somewhat impul- 
sive, lie was occasionally betrayed into appar- 
ent rashness, as when on one occasion he de- 
molished an idol in the presence of heathen 
worshipers. 

Pliitschau, faithful but quiet, and somewhat 
deficient in force of character, having com- 
pleted the period of his engagement (five 
years) and suffering from impaired health, re- 
turned home in 1711. Three years later Zie- 
genbalg paid a visit to Europe. 

-*t. u '? p .T There were difficulties which he 

Visited. 

hoped a personal conference with 
the directors of the Danish East India Com- 
pany and with the College of Missions would 
enable him to remove. Speaking of his de- 
parture he wrote : x " Every one of our young 
men and old men have wet my hands and my 
feet with tears." 

Denmark was then at war with Sweden; but 
the king received our returned missionary as 
he had Pliitschau, very graciously, at Stral- 
sund in Pomerania, which he was then besieg- 
ing. Ziegenbalg naturally visited Copenhagen. 
At Halle and elsewhere in Germany his pres- 
ence awakened interest; his preaching was elo- 
quent, and crowds thronged to hear him. The 
Duke of Wiirtemberg favored collections being 



He left Tranquebar October 26, 1714. 



DANISH MISSIONS. 169 

taken up throughout his dominion. In return- 
ing to India our missionary — now accompanied 
by a help meet for him — went to England, 
where he had an audience with George I and 
the royal family, preached repeatedly in the 
Savoy and royal chapel, and received many 
contributions for the work in India. His stay, 
though not long, was the occasion of new in- 
terest in the cause of missions to the heathen. 
But religious life was then at a low ebb. As 
on the Continent, latitudinarianism and spiritual 
languor prevailed. Throughout the Church of 
England, and to a sad extent also among dis- 
senting bodies, a semi-pagan praise of virtue 
instead of Christ and him crucified filled the 
pulpit, and a semi-rationalism was spreading. 

The next year after Ziegenbalg's return * to 
Tranquebar (1717) over thirty natives were 
admitted by baptism to the Christian commu- 
nity and the year following upwards of fifty. 
In the course of twelve years' active service 
he performed no small amount of literary labor. 
On his voyage to Europe just referred to he 
took with him a Tamil boy for the sake of 
continued exercise in the language, and then 
commenced in Latin a grammar of the Tamil, 
which to this day is not wholly superseded. 
In the same manner, more than a century 
later (1845), Judson, when he sailed from 

1 He arrived March, 1716. 



170 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

Maulmain for Boston, took with him two na- 
tive assistants that he might continue his prep- 
aration of the Burmese dictionary. Ziegenbalg 
engaged in the translation of several minor 
productions, some of them from the Halle stock 
of literature. Choice German hymns were ren- 
dered into Tamil. But his chief work was the 
translation of the entire New Testament and 
a portion of the Old Testament, as far as 

the Book of Ruth. This formed 
i erary ^ e basis of the Tamil Scriptures 

now in use. It has the defects 
characteristic of many translations of the Scrip- 
tures — it was not idiomatic. 1 Thus two hun- 
dred years after Luther's immortal work the 
first version of God's Word into a language of 
India was made. It should be added that the 
Tamil belongs to the Dravidian, the Southern 
great stock of languages, and though the San- 
skrit element is large — forty per cent — it is 
less than in most others. The area of Tamil- 
speaking natives is about the same as that of 
England and Wales, and the Tamulians are the 
most important family of peoples in the south- 
ern part of the peninsula. But neither the 
Sanskrit, that mother of languages, unsurpassed 
by any other, living or dead, in its power of 
precision and expansion, nor the English, so 
much coveted by young Hindustan, nor any 



1 Note 33. 



DANISH MISSIONS. 171 

other foreign tongue can be the medium of 
general evangelization. That must be the 
office of vernaculars. Ziegenbalg wisely set 
about the translation of our Holy Scriptures 
into the Tamil. The first edition of the New 
Testament was issued in 1715. Since that date 
versions of a part or the whole of the Bible 
have been made into perhaps threescore other 
native languages, to say nothing of sundry vari- 
ous tentative translations. India has thus been 
enriched beyond all that Golconda ever yielded. 
Do we hold to the unique divine inspiration 
of our canon, and, while conceding the human 
elements, yet do we bow to the volume as su- 
premely authoritative? To the apprehension of 
the Hindu there are scores of productions in 
his sacred literature that issued as the very 
breath from the mouth of the Self-existent. 
The pundit deems our Bible puny. His own 
divine writings he pronounces a fathomless, 
shoreless ocean. With him vastness is a crite- 
rion of excellence. He revels in the intermi- 
nable. Does the reading of three great epics — 
the Iliad, the JEneid, and Paradise Lost — seem 
a rather formidable undertaking in our busy 
age? The great epic of India, the MaJiabha- 
rata, is double the length of those three com- 
bined. Time is of small value in the East. 
Hindu imagination revels in vague immensity 
and inane prolixity. 



172 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

Marshall, who devotes two stout volumes 
to disparaging Protestant missionaries, remarks: 
" Of Ziegenbalg but little need be said, for it 
does not appear that his life supplies any ma- 
terial for history." J To lead the first mission 
which carried the gospel of our Lord Jesus 
Christ to continental India; to do this in spite 
of prejudice, misconception, derision, apathy, 
and calumny (one pamphlet pronounced him 
" a Pietist and an impious idiot ") ; to give the 
book of the new covenant in their own lan- 
guage to a people numbering fifteen millions, 
from whom Romish propagandists had with- 
held it for more than a century; to consume 
strength in a self-denying, persistent devotion 
to the highest interests of a pagan people, some 
of whom are now praising God in glory — will 
strike others as not unworthy of record. 

"Far in the East I see upleap 

The streaks of first forewarning, 
And they who sowed the light shall reap 
The golden sheaves of morning." 

Cotton Mather, to whom Ziegenbalg had writ- 
ten in Latin, replies in the same language: "A 
work how illustrious ! how celestial ! how sub- 
lime ! O, thrice and four times happy they 
who are ministers of God in such a work I 
Happy though never so much harrassed with 



Christian Missions, I, p. 280. 



DANISH MISSIONS. 173 

labors and watchings and perpetual troubles! 
Happy beyond all expression did they but 
know their own happiness ! " x A purse made 
up by young gentlemen in Boston was for- 
warded to Ziegenbalg in aid of his charity 
schools. Prayer, also, was elicited in behalf 
of the work carried on at Tranquebar. 2 The 
Archbishop of Canterbury, writing to Ziegen- 
balg and Griindler (on New Year's Day), 
says : " I consider your lot is far higher than 
all church dignities. Let others be prelates, 
patriarchs, and popes; let them be adorned 
with purple and scarlet ; let them desire bow- 
ings and genuflections — you have won a greater 
honor than all these." 

Ziegenbalg had overworked. Perplexities wore 
upon him. Discouragements are peculiarly re- 
laxing and disheartening in the tropics. Amidst 
his valuable labors fatal sickness came upon 
him, and the twenty-third day of February, 
1719, was his last on earth. 3 He asked to have 
the hymn sung: 

"Jesus, my Kedeemer, lives; 
Christ, my trust, is dead no more." 4 

Putting his hands to his eyes he exclaimed: 



1 Opus quam illustre, quam celeste, quam sublime, etc. 

2 Note 34. 

3 Dock die Nacht ham noch vor mittag. Baierlein, p. 84. 

* Jesus, meine Zuversicht. By Louisa Henrietta yon Branden- 
burg, wife of the Great Elector, Frederick William. 



174 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

" How is it all so clear ? It seems as if the 
sun were shining in my eyes ! " At thirty-six 
years of age Clive, the hero of Plassey and 
founder of the British Empire in India, was 
raised to the peerage ; at thirty-six Ziegenbalg 
was raised to a place among those "made kings 
and priests unto God and his Father." Thirty- 
six was the age of John Mayhew when he 
closed his missionary work on Martha's Vine- 
yard and when Samuel J. Mills was committed 
to the great cemetery of the sea. At the same 
age Ann Haseltine Judson, the first American 
woman who resolved to go to India as a mis- 
sionary, was buried beneath a widespreading 
Hopia tree in Burmah ; and the same year, at 
the same age, Gordon Hall, the first American 
missionary in Bombay, amidst the agonies of 
Asiatic cholera, on the veranda of a heathen 
temple, exclaimed three times, " Glory to thee, 
O God ! " and then fell asleep in Jesus. 



CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 175 



CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 



LECTURE VIII. — TRANQUEBAR MISSION". 

( Continued.) 

We will station ourselves for a moment in 
the heart of Germany at the middle of the last 
century. Frederick the Great, self-reliant, per- 
sistent, skeptical, with a penetrating genius, but 
without exalted ideas, is midway in his brilliant 
and checkered course. The peace of Aix-la- 
Chapelle (1748) ended the eight 
years' War of the Austrian Suc- 
cession and secured a breathing time before the 
seven years' War of the Spanish Succession. In 
the world of letters a new era is dawning — 
the birth epoch of a literature varied and rich. 
Klopstock, always more praised than read, has 
produced the first cantos of his Messiah. Less- 
ing, with his strong German genius and lan- 
guage, is just coming upon the stage and will 
give impulse to the national mind, especially in 
the line of independent thought. The noble 
Gellert, of Leipzig, shows a classic ease and 
keen good sense, which delight the entire pub- 



176 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

lie, even peasants, one of whom leaves a cart- 
load of firewood at his door as an acknowledg- 
ment of what he has enjoyed in reading the 
poet's fables. Good-natured " Father Gleim " 
indicates the new tendency of utter frivolity. 
"From my earliest days," says he, "I have had 
a thought of writing a book like the Bible." 
The result was a treatise thoroughly common- 
place and valueless on virtue. The philosophy 
of Leibnitz and Wolf is making inroads upon 
pietism, which has lost somewhat of its vitality 
and is, to a certain extent, growing narrow and 
censorious. Semler, who inaugurates a move- 
ment issuing speedily in rationalism, is called 
(1751) to Halle, and Michaelis, who contrib- 
utes to the same result, is installed at Got- 
tingen (1750). Emanuel Swedenborg occupies 
himself with what he is pleased to call reve- 
lations. English deism, previously introduced 
into France, has been transplanted into Ger- 
many and is yielding baleful fruits. The age 
is one of hollowness ; few truly great men, few 
conspicuous men with noble motives, are any- 
where to be found. 

It was in 1750 that Christian Frederick 
Schwartz, better known to English and Amer- 
ican readers than any other German missionary, 
one of the more eminent men of the eighteenth 
century, sailed for Tranquebar. He was born 
(October 26, 1726) at Sonnenburg in Prussia, 



CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 177 

fifty miles east from Berlin — a place now de- 
cayed, but of note when the Knights of St. 
John made it one of their seats and held fes- 
tivals there. Unlike the crusaders Schwartz 
and his townsman, Schultze, another able mis- 
sionary, were true standard bearers of the cross 
in the East. Like many another missionary 
Schwartz had a pious mother, who died during 
his infancy, but who, just before decease, in- 
formed her husband and her pastor that she 
had dedicated this son to the Lord; and she 
obtained from them the pledge 
that he should be informed of 
this, should be trained accordingly, and, if he 
chose the sacred ministry, they would give him 
encouragement. The year of his entering the 
gymnasium at Kiistrin (1740), whither his 
father accompanied him on foot, was the same 
with the accession of Frederick the Great, 
who, ten years before, had been a prisoner in 
this fortified town. A young lady interested 
herself in his spiritual welfare, loaning him 
a work 1 by the celebrated August Hermann 
Fran eke, which made a deep impression on his 
mind and marked the turning point in his life. 
Among the lectures which he attended at the 
University of Halle were those of the professor 
just named (Fran eke). He was recommended 
to take lessons in Tamil, with a view to assist 



1 Seegensvolle Fusstapen. 



178 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

Schultze, a returned missionary from Madras, 
in carrying Tamil works through the press for 
use in India. 

Such is the immediate occasion of his 
thoughts being turned toward that part of 
the world. Provided his father's approval can 
be obtained he proposes to offer himself as a 
missionary. But great obstacles stand in the 
way. Christian Frederick being the eldest son 
is looked upon as the chief hope of the family, 
so that no one supposes parental consent can 
be had. With great seriousness the young 
candidate states his wishes and his motive. 
The father very suitably takes a few days to 
consider, mentioning the time when his deci- 
sion will be made known. At the hour named 
he comes down from his chamber, gives his 
blessing, bids him go in God's name, forgetting 
native land and kindred that he may win souls 
to Christ. The mother's dedication is thus 
crowned with the father's benediction. Resign- 
ing his patrimony to younger members of the 
family he hastens back to Halle, and, though 
he receives within a few days the offer of an 
eligible situation in the ministry at home, hav- 
ing put his hand to the plow he will not 
look back. You recall the similar case of 
Horton, Brainerd, Hall, and many another. 

The spiritual life of German churches has at 
this time evidently declined, yet a warm cur- 



CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 179 

rent may still be traced and there are a few 
who sympathize with Schwartz. Some sweet 
singers of Israel there are to whom the prom- 
ised glories of Messiah's kingdom do not seem 
visionary, and although Irymnody has lost 
much of its freshness and power the deeply 
pious Tersteegen is in his advanced prime ; so 
is Hiller, who composed more than a thousand 
hymns. That was the time when the first 
strictly missionary hymn appeared in the Ger- 
man language, under the title, "A prayer to 
the Lord to send faithful laborers into his har- 
vest, that his Word may be spread over all the 
world." It was composed (1749) by Charles 
Henry von Bogatsky, author of the well-known 
Golden Treasury. The author states that it 
was written at a time when the Lord specially 
stirred him up to pray for the extension of his 
kingdom by means of devoted Christian work- 
ers. 1 The hymn is still a favorite at mission- 
ary meetings in Germany. It consists of four- 
teen stanzas and begins: 

Wach auf, du Geist der ersten Zeugen. 

"Awake, thou Spirit, who of old 
Didst fire the watchmen of the Church's youth, 

Who faced the foe, unshrinking, bold, 
Who witnessed day and night the eternal truth ; 
Whose voices through the world are ringing still, 
And bringing hosts to know and do thy will ! " 



1 Kiibler's Historical Notes to Lyra Germanica, p. 41. 



180 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

With a song in his heart Schwartz goes on 
his way. Like his predecessors in the Ger- 
mano-Danish mission he proceeds, in company 
with two other candidates, to Copenhagen for 
ordination (September, 1749). They take Eng- 
land in their way to India. While they were 
lying in Falmouth Harbor, where contrary 
winds detained them for a month (March, 
1750), u an inhabitant of the town," so writes 
Schwartz, "came on board who had been pow- 
erfully awakened by Mr. Whitefield," which 

suggests that a favorable change 
Outset. , 6 \ . ,, „ . ° 

has begun m the religious condi- 
tion of Great Britain compared with the time, 
half a century earlier, when the first two mis- 
sionaries, Ziegenbalg and Pliitschau, were on 
their way to India. This side the ocean in 
1750 we see the Moravian Zeisberger also fas- 
tening his eye upon the Six Nations ; three 
years since David Brainerd fell asleep in Jesus 
and his brother John succeeded him; John Ser- 
geant, missionary among the Indians in West- 
ern Massachusetts, died one year ago (1749); 
and Jonathan Edwards, dismissed from North- 
ampton the present season, will soon succeed 
him in the same work (1751). 

When Schwartz reached India (July, 1750) 
it was in the midst of protracted struggles for 
ascendancy between the French and English. 1 



1 G. B. Malleson : History of the French in India. London, 1893. 



CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 181 

Each sought alliance, now with one, now with 
another, native prince, till the strife carried 
desolation to many portions of the Carnatic. 
English power finally gains ascendancy. For 
the interests of the kingdom of God that re- 
sult, in his good providence, bids fair to prove 
scarcely less important than the corresponding 
supremacy which the English instead of the 
French achieved at the same period on this 
Western Continent. It was in 1750 that Clive, 
who went out two years before as a writer in 
the employ of the East India Company, cap- 
tured Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic. 

The disturbed state of that country does 
not hinder our missionary from settling down 
quietly to his work at Tranquebar. He enters 
upon a field already cultivated to some extent. 
We revert for a moment to that earlier period 
at which our survey in the preceding lecture 
closed. The next year after Zie- 

,,,,.,.-. , The Mission. 

genbalg s death three new col- 
leagues arrived, one of whom was Benjamin 
Schultze, an excellent linguist. He was some- 
what familiar with the classics and with He- 
brew, as well as various modern languages 
— the French, Spanish, Italian, Danish, and 
Dutch. True to the German linguistic instinct 
he soon mastered the Tamil and completed the 
translation of the Old Testament into that 
tongue, and the New Testament, as well as 



182 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

portions of the Old, into Telugu. He was an 
ardent man, a hard-working man, mentally su- 
perior to his associates; and, as is apt to be 
true in such cases, he grew somewhat arbitrary 
and could not work comfortably with them. 
After laboring six years in and around Tran- 
quebar he removed to Madras and passed into 
the employ of the English Society for Propa- 
gating the Gospel (1726). Seven hundred 
heathen and Roman Catholics were baptized 
by him. 

Want of time forbids the rehearsal of all 
those names which appear in the list of rein- 
forcements at various intervals, as well as de- 
tailed accounts of the operations of the mission. 
In 1740, a little more than thirty years from 
its beginning — perhaps at its maximum of suc- 
cess — it had indirectly, by offshoots, extended 
northward to the settlements of Cuddalore and 
Madras and toward the interior into the king- 
dom of Tanjore. A staff of ten European and 
about thirty native laborers, one of the latter 
ordained, were in the field, and between five 
and six thousand baptisms had taken place. 
By some it is estimated that at the time of 
Schwartz's arrival nine thousand nominal con- 
verts had been secured. 

Within four months from his arrival at 
Tranquebar this young missionary, having the 
usual German facility for acquiring languages, 



CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 183 

preaches his first sermon in Tamil. Besides 
keeping up his study of the Hebrew and 
Greek Scriptures he masters the Tamil and 
Indo-Portuguese z and comes to speak the Per- 
sian fluently — that being the tongue in use 
by one part of the Mohammedan population — 
also the Hindustani, the lingua franca of that 
country. 

His theory — a sound one, and to which 
his practice corresponded — was that preaching 
should be the chief work of the missionary. 
True he early engaged in cate- 

A.s JVIissioricirv 

chising the schools, Tamil and 
Portuguese, and this may be called one branch 
and form of preaching. He did much in the 
way of establishing and maintaining schools, 
and, like Isaac Watts and some other eminent 
men who have remained unmarried, he was 
noticeably fond of children. Yet the more pub- 
lic oral promulgation of the gospel to adults 
was Schwartz's vocation. 

In the year 1556 Martin Luther preached 
at Eisleben, his native place, from the closing 
verses of the eleventh chapter of Matthew's 
Gospel, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden." It was his last sermon and 
only three days before his death. Two hun- 
dred years afterwards Schwartz took up the 
same subject from the same words as the text 



Note 35. 



184 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

of his first Tamil sermon. What could be 
more appropriate for the venerable reformer 
of the sixteenth century or this youthful evan- 
gelist of the eighteenth? The cross, which can 
never fail to supply subject-matter and inspi- 
ration to the preacher, be his field what it 
may, Schwartz kept steadily in mind. Has 
not " Conquer by this ! " sounded in the ear 
of every successful leader of the sacramental 
host, from the great apostle of the Gentiles to 
the last lay evangelist? 1 Wherever he went — 
by the wayside, in the choltry, in the shadow 
of Brahmanic temples, in the English camp, and 
at the court of the nabob — he was faithfully 
intent upon making known the gospel of sal- 
vation. Of this kind of labor, preeminently 
fitting, he performed more, perhaps, than any 
other man in the whole history of Danish 
missions. 

Schwartz was not of ardent temperament; 
did not develop rapidly, but in a gradual 
growth. Ambition to shine in India or to win 
a reputation in Europe did not incite to pre- 
mature or impatient demonstrations. The aver- 
age man should be content to spend the first 
ten years of his professional life in laying 
wisely the foundations on which he may ex- 
pect to build for the remainder of life. Dur- 
ing his first decade in India our missionary 



Note 36. 



CHEISTIAN FEEDEEICK SCHWAETZ. 185 

was doing that. Associates did not predict his 
future. Mastering the vernaculars required in 
his work he also made himself familiar with 
the religious views, social condition, histor} r , 
habits, and entire circle of mental associations 
of the people. Year after year he not only 
used but was qualifying himself the better to 
use God's Word as the key for opening a 
way into the hideous chambers of imagery 
in the native mind. His sphere of operation 
gradually enlarges. He visits Negapatam, one 
hundred and eighty miles southward from Ma- 
dras. In response to an invitation from Cey- 
lon (1760) he visits Jaffna — in which district 
the American Board has now for nearly four- 
score years had a mission — and proceeds to 
Colombo and to Point de Galle, the southern 
extremity of the island, " confirming the souls 
of the disciples." There was a five months' 
absence from his own field. Later he makes 
an excursion to Madura at the time of its 
siege and capture (1764), and where our 
American mission was established in 1834. 
He makes a tour to Palamcotta, three hun- 
dred miles from Madras, in the district of 
Tinnevelly, the region of remarkable suc- 
cess at the present day on the part of the 
English Church Missionary Society. For the 
first twenty years of his life in India he usu- 
ally walked when journeying. Accompanied 



186 PBOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

by another missionary he went in that way to 
Tanjore (1762), which place he often visited 
afterwards. It will be recollected that Tanjore 
is the native capital of Southern India, six 
miles in circumference — the Benares of the 
South — an ancient center of learning and re- 
ligious influence. Within that little kingdom, 
now only a province, are temples unsurpassed 
in number and magnificence, and at that date 
there were a hundred thousand Brahmans liv- 
ing in voluptuous sloth. Forty miles from 
Tanjore up the River Cavery is the town of 
Trichinopoly. After the Christian Knowledge 
Society established a mission there (1767) 
Schwartz came under their patronage, and spent 
the remainder of his life chiefly at that place 
and at Tanjore. Purposing at first to remain 
only a few weeks he prolonged his stay for 
more than thirty years. 

Although more than a third of a century has 

passed since my visit to that place it comes 

with great distinctness to recollection, and more 

especially the Rock of Trichin- 

Tric *£° poly °P o1 ^' an inland Gibraltar > loom - 
ing abruptly from the plain — 
isolated, bold, precipitous, three hundred feet 
in height, surmounted by a fortress and a pa- 
goda. Lower down is a larger temple and the 
magazine. The ascent is by stone steps, and 
the view from the summit is one never to 



CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 187 

be forgotten. Beneath you see the fort, the 
rajah's palace, and a population of eighty thou- 
sand souls; while stretching out in all direc- 
tions lies an illimitable plain, fertile and popu- 
lous. Two miles distant the river divides and 
forms the sacred island of Serin gham, where 
stands a famous temple. Temples in India are 
numberless, and as a general thing are small. 
No seats are found in them nor any assemblage 
to receive instruction. As compared with such 
structures in middle and northern districts 
those in Southern India are on a grander scale 
and have more ample decorations. Remarkable 
as some of these are they are yet perhaps less 
wonderful than the rock temples. 1 This struc- 
ture in Seringham has an outer wall four miles 
in extent, with a main entrance truly magnifi- 
cent. Some of the stones built into the front 
are of a size equal to those in the foundations 
of Solomon's temple — thirty feet or more in 
length and five in thickness. Fourteen pyram- 
idal towers rise to a great height around the 
inclosure. Inside are seven square inclosures, 
one within another — answering in number to 
the quadrangular courts which compose the 



1 John Dudley : Naology. London, 1846. M. W. Carr : The 
Seven Pagodas of the Coromandel Coast. Madras, 1809. James 
Fergusson : Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples in India. Lon- 
don, 1845. James Fergusson : History of Indian and Eastern 
Architecture. London, 1876. 



188 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

heaven of Vishnu — each surrounded by a wall 
twenty-five feet high. One apartment, a hun- 
dred and fifty feet in length, has a flat stone 
roof, supported by a thousand pillars, no two 
of them alike — each pillar a single block of 
granite, elaborately carved and representing 
some legend in the history of the god to 
whom the temple is dedicated. Five thousand 
priests are there accommodated, and throngs of 
debased worshipers resorting thither correspond 
with the general scale of things. But for the 
Christian visitor a special interest attaches to 
Trichinopoly as the place where Schwartz la- 
bored faithfully and where the author of our 
favorite missionary hymn closed his pilgrimage. 
You are shown the bath in which, April 2, 
1826, was found the lifeless body of Bishop 
Heber. 

This part of the Carnatic was, in the course 
of the eighteenth century, the scene of repeated 
struggles between the English and French 1 and 
between English and native forces. It is in- 
separably associated with the name of a Mo- 
hammedan prince, Hyder AH, the ablest enemy 
which England has met in India. As the mis- 
sionary life of Schwartz fell within the period 
and in the vicinity of such fierce struggles he 
could not easily avoid certain offices which 



1 G. B. Malleson : History of the French in India. London, 
1893. 



CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 189 

were as exceptional as was the general condi- 
tion of things. If Washington wisely advised 
our nation to avoid all entangling foreign alli- 
ances, much more is it needful that ambassa- 
dors of Christ should ordinarily keep aloof 
from political complications and from secular 
engagements which do not necessarily pertain 
to their high vocation. Those in the employ of 
the American Board are charged very strictly 
upon this point. To enter the service of any 
government sunders the connection of a mis- 
sionary with that Board. Jesuit 
missionaries have everywhere en- s 

gaged in political intrigues, often 
apparently advantageous to them at the outset, 
but always damaging at last. In the case of 
Schwartz there would seem to have been a 
clear propriety in his accepting certain outside 
engagements that were urged upon him and 
which the exigencies of the hour appeared to 
render imperative. He was solicited to act as 
medium of communication between the local 
English government and some of the native 
princes and even between a native prince and 
his own subjects. Intimate acquaintance with 
the vernacular languages and with the condi- 
tion and customs of the country, a sense of 
gratitude to the East India Company for favors 
shown him, an opportunity to serve important 
interests auxiliary to his greater work, and an 



190 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

opportunity to make known the truth where 
he could not otherwise have done it induced 
him, without suspending his sacred office, to 
undertake temporarily an additional service. 
"At the same time I resolved," he says — and 
a wise resolution it was — "I resolved to keep 
my hands undefiled from any presents, by 
which determination the Lord enabled me to 
abide — so that I have not accepted a single 
farthing save my traveling expenses." The na- 
tives are shrewd in judging of character. Hy- 
der Ali was eminently sagacious, and any trace 
of a mercenary spirit would have been fatal 
to our missionary's influence. But with such 
manifest unselfishness and frank sincerity did 
he carry himself as to win fullest confidence. 
Afterwards the sanguinary Hyder, in the midst 
of a devastating career, gave orders to his 
army officers "to permit the venerable Padre 
Schwartz to pass unmolested and to show him 
respect and kindness, for he is a holy man 
and means no harm to my government." In 
the course of the war the fort of Tanjore was 
reduced to straits, provisions being insufficient 
even for the garrison, much less for a throng 
not belonging to the garrison. A powerful 
enemy was at hand. Grain enough might be 
found in the country, but no means of trans- 
portation. Outsiders, deceived and abused by 
government officials, had lost all confidence and 



CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 191 

refused to render assistance. The rajah, whose 
orders and entreaties were alike ineffectual, at 
length said, "We all, you and I, have lost our 
credit ; let us try whether the inhabitants will 
trust Mr. Schwartz." The missionary is accord- 
ingly empowered to make arrangements with 
the people. No time can be lost. The emaci- 
ated Sepoys are falling down from exhaustion 
and the streets are lined with the dead every 
morning. 1 Such, however, is the confidence of 
the country people in this man of God that, 
upon his mere promise to indemnify them, he 
obtains in the course of a day or two a thou- 
sand oxen and all needed supplies of grain. 
The fort is saved. The next year, under simi- 
lar circumstances, the same thing occurs again. 
At another time, when the oppressed inhabit- 
ants suspended cultivation of the soil and left 
the region, no promises of the tyrannical rajah 
could recall them. Schwartz was solicited to 
assure them that at his intercession they should 
be treated kindly, whereupon seven thousand 
came back in one clay. When he exhorts them 
to clo their utmost they reply, "As you have 
showed kindness to us you shall not have rea- 
son to repent it ; we intend to work day and 
night to show our regard for you." 

In 1789 Tuljajee, failing of immediate de- 



Note 37. 



192 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

scendants, adopted a relative (Serfogee x ), ten 
years of age, as his successor in the kingdom 
of Tanjore. Sending for Schwartz the rajah 
pointed to the child and said : " This is not my 
son, but yours ; into your hand I deliver him." 
"I appoint you to be guardian; I intend to give 
him over to your care." The missionary, how- 
ever, had the good sense promptly to decline 
such a charge, the rajah being near his end, 
though in the personal welfare and education 
of Serfogee Schwartz continued to exercise a 
lively interest and was recognized as guardian. 
Could there be more decisive proofs of the 
power of Christian character over Europeans 
and natives, peasants and princes alike ? Ulfi- 
las, missionary bishop among the Goths in the 
fourth century, went more than once as ambas- 
sador to Constantinople, yet his political serv- 
ices were less effective than those of our hum- 
ble German missionary in India. The position 
of Schwartz in that regard is perhaps without 
parallel, and will probably never be repeated. 
Judson's place in an embassy to the Burman 
court was that of translator, not of negotiator. 
But outside services of such delicacy and re- 
sponsibility should be eschewed. To be the 
counselor of kings, to be the confidential 
adviser of secular governments, must always 
prove a hazardous experience on the part of 

1 Sarbojee it should read. 



CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 193 

men who can never afford to compromise their 
high spiritual function. 

At the outset of his missionary career 
Schwartz wrote, "If we should ever suffer 
ignominy and disgrace for the sake of Jesus 
we are unworthy of so great an honor." His 
meekness, like that of many another mission- 
ary, was put to the test by the tongue of slan- 
der, but in the end he shone all the brighter. 
Possessing administrative talent similar to that 
of John Wesley he had much primitive sim- 
plicity and self-control. Kohlhoff, who was as- 
sociated with him for thirty-five years, testified 
that he had never seen him angry or indig- 
nant, except when servants of the Lord were 
acting inconsistently or timidly. Then he was 
on fire. 

His chief mistake — the mistake, also, of some 
other German missionaries — was too much leni- 
ency regarding caste. 1 This institution is the 
most conspicuous and most remarkable feature 

of society in India. The native 

. Caste. 

theory is that birth determines the 

matter, that caste is of divine appointment. 
It is sanctioned by the sacred books, and, be- 
ing an affair of religion, takes firm hold of the 



1 C. V. Hamaswamy : Digest of the Castes of India. Madras, 
1837. B. A. Irving : Theory and Practice of Caste. London, 
1853. Arthur J. Patterson : Caste Considered. London, 1861. 
Edward W. Hopk'ns : Mutual Relations of the Four Castes. 
Leipzig, 1881. 



194 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

Hindu mind. With us and elsewhere differ- 
ences of rank are determined by the course of 
events in human history. In India these dif- 
ferences are deemed to be original and consti- 
tutional. Our tribe of Flatheads, as well as 
Chinese parents, are responsible for the respec- 
tive deformities of skull and feet. Not so with 
the castes of India, which exist, as the people 
believe, by predetermining creation. Accord- 
ingly no individual can rise from a lower to 
a higher, and those in the lower are not less 
tenacious of their clan condition than those 
above them. The superior have a haughty 
bearing ; the inferior maintain abject servility. 
Love or fellowship between such is impracti- 
cable, and nothing can be more destructive of 
Christian brotherhood — nothing can more effec- 
tually neutralize the Golden Rule. 

An iron rigidity binds the caste man. Let an 
incident illustrate. A high caste soldier hav- 
ing fainted and fallen the military surgeon or- 
dered one of the Pariah attendants of the hos- 
pital to throw water on him. In consequence 
thereof none of his class would afterwards as- 
sociate with him, because his rank had thus, 
though involuntarily, been forfeited. Hence he 
soon committed suicide. 1 This amazing scrupu- 
losity has respect, for instance, to food. If 
President Grant or the Prince of Wales when 



New India., p. 157. 



CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 195 

in India had touched the humblest and hungri- 
est Hindu's boiled rice he would have thrown 
it away as unclean. Another occurrence will 
show how relentless caste can be. The Rev. 
Mr. Hoole relates that while dining one day at 
the mission house in Madras, a woman, much 
worn by hunger and fatigue, came opposite the 
door and lowered from her back a tall lad, 
who was reduced to a skeleton and unable to 
stand alone. Help was implored. The mission- 
ary at once ordered rice and curry to be taken 
from the table to them, but the woman rejected 
the food for herself and her famishing boy, be- 
cause it was against the rule of her caste to 
eat anything cooked or touched by Europeans. 1 
Schwartz remained single. It was with him 
a matter of principle in his circumstances, upon 
the ground suggested by the apostle Paul in 
the seventh chapter of First Corinthians, and 
he continued strongly in favor of celibacy on 
the part of missionaries during the 
earlier years of their life among 
the heathen. This suggests an embarrassing 
incident, which revealed the possibilities of in- 
discretion on the part of persons meddling with 
matrimonial affairs which do not concern them. 
A ship chaplain had been requested by a friend 
of the elder Kohlhoff, then a widower, to nego- 



1 Hoole, Elijah : 2/adras, Mysore, and the South of India. 
Second edition. London, 1844. P. 314. 



196 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

tiate in Germany for some one to go out and 
complete his domestic establishment. The offi- 
cious man announced that he had a commis- 
sion from the missionaries indefinitely to pro- 
cure wives for them. In consequence of these 
representations two young women sailed for 
Tranquebar, whom the chaplain had mentally 
designated to be companions for Kohlhoff and 
Schwartz, and that, too, although the latter 
never intimated a desire for such an arrange- 
ment, much less had authorized this matrimo- 
nial broker to act as his agent. The good 
man felt constrained to make the most solemn 
written asseveration that the proceeding was 
entirely without his sanction, and that even if 
the young woman in question were a suitable 
person — it was perfectly evident she was not 
— he could never depart from his avowed pur- 
pose and was free from all responsibility in 
the matter. 

Schwartz experienced signal preservations. 
Once when rising he found a very poisonous 
snake on the spot where he had been lying. 
When the powder magazine blew up at Trich- 
inopoly (1772) he was in imminent peril, but 
neither he nor any of his Christian community 
suffered injury. He had for the most part 
excellent health. He was a German oak in 
the land of palms. 1 Late in life he wrote : 



1 Heinrich von Mertz, in Piper's Zeugen der Warheit, IV, p. 



CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 197 

" Though I am now in the sixty-ninth year of 
my age I am still able to perform the ordinary 
functions of my office. Of sickness I know 
little or nothing." Marshall, the Roman Cath- 
olic reviler of Protestant missionaries, saj^s of 
Schwartz, " What he lacked was precisely that 
treasure of which he never knew his need 
— the gift of divine faith and the mission 
which God has resolved to bestow only on 
his church." * God in his sovereign goodness 

imparted to him true Scriptural 

jy ... , , 1 . , Devotedness. 

iaitn — clear, strong, and consist- 
ent — to an unusual degree, preserving him 
from the superstitions, ritualism, and gross 
errors of Romanism, and enabling him to wit- 
ness a good confession to the end. The faith- 
ful man remained on the field without once 
revisiting his fatherland or the country which 
for many years had sustained him. He was 
earnestly industrious. During the first period 
of his life in India he held a Tamil service 
every Sabbath morning early, one in English 
at ten o'clock in the forenoon, besides a Bible 
exercise in the evening, followed by a prayer 
meeting. The secular portion of the week was 
fully occupied, so much so that he often found 
no time for study except in the night. 

He loved his work. Toward the close of 



Christian Missions, I, p. 282. 



198 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

life he exclaimed (1796) : " Ebenezer, hitherto 
hath the Lord helped me ! Today I entered 
upon my seventy-first year. O, the riches of 
his grace, compassion, and forbearance which I 
have experienced during seventy years! Praise, 
honor, and adoration are due to a gracious 
God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for the 
numerous proofs of his abounding grace ! " 
Happy, thrice happy old man ! 

The habits of our missionary, as might natu- 
rally be inferred, were simple and inexpensive. 
A small apartment and a dish of rice satisfied 
him, while no discernible elements of asceticism 
appeared. With a truly self-deny- 
ing spirit he acted as almoner and 
benefactor to all in times of bloodshed and 
famine ; and we are reminded of the good 
deeds of our own Calhoun amidst the massa- 
cres of Mount Lebanon, the kind offices of our 
missionaries after the earthquake in Eastern 
Turkey a few years ago, their exhausting serv- 
ices in behalf of victims of Turkish cruelty in 
Bulgaria, as well as during famines in Asia 
Minor, India, and China. Yes, as a class mis- 
sionaries are preeminently philanthropic, and 
nobly deny themselves out of regard to the 
name of their Master. Such a one was 
Schwartz. English residents in Southern India 
were fully convinced of this. At one time, 
owing to a general distress resulting from the 



CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 199 

ravages of war, he forbore to draw from gov- 
ernment his pay as chaplain. Repeatedly did 
he refuse pay tendered for special services. 
Starting on his return journey from Hyder Ali 
Schwartz found three hundred rupees in his 
vehicle, which he immediately set apart for 
purposes of charity. " Only let money be 
offered to any one," say the Brahmans, "and all 
his good resolutions vanish ; " yet so convinced 
were even the natives of this man's complete 
integrity that when the Rajah of Tanjore sent 
for him to secure his mediation he said to 
Schwartz, "Padre, I have confidence in you, 
because you are indifferent to money;" and 
an English officer declares, in a published work 
on India, 1 "The intelligence and uprightness 
of this blameless missionary have rescued the 
European character from the imputation of 
universal corruption." 

Schwartz lived seventy-two years, forty-eight 
of which were devoted to evangelistic labor in 
India. He took no part of that long period to 
visit Europe, nor for that purpose did Kier- 
nander take any part of his fifty- 
nine years in India. The popular on £ evi y- 
impression has been that the climate of that 
country is not favorable to longevity among 
Europeans. So far, however, as German mis- 
sionaries are concerned vital statistics present 

1 Colonel Fullerton, in his Views of English Interest in India. 



200 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

a rare showing. Four of them (Hiittemann, 1 
Cnoll, Breithaupt, Gericke) were able to serve 
from thirty to forty years ; six of them (Zeg- 
lin, Pohle, John, Klein, Cammerer, Schwartz) 
from forty to fifty years; and five of them 
(Fabricius, J. B. KohlhofT, J. C. KohlhofT, Kier- 
nander, Rottler) from fifty to sixty years. Of 
these the elder KohlhofT reached seventy-nine 
years of age, Fabricius eighty, 2 KohlhofT junior 
eighty-two, Rottler eighty-seven, and Kiernan- 
cler eighty-eight. Among American mission- 
aries in the same country Ballantine labored 
thirty years, Munger thirty-four, John Scudder 
thirty-six, Poor thirty-nine, Meigs forty-one, 
Winslow forty-four, and Spaulding fifty-three. 

During the last year of life Schwartz's 
strength was evidently failing. Four months 
of suffering and of special grace were ap- 
pointed him at the close. Favorite hymns 
were sung in his room, his own 
voice often joining. On the thir- 
teenth of February (1798) native assistants 
sang the last stanza of Gerhardt's best-known 
hymn, Haupt voll Blut und Wunden: 

"Be near me when I'm dying; 
0, show thy cross to me ! 
And for my succor flying, 

Come, Lord, and set me free ! " 



1 Grimfield's Sketches of Danish Missions everywhere gives 
this as Hiifferman (pp. 80-112). 

2 Note 38. 



CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SCHWARTZ. 201 

Serfogee, the rajah, visited him in his last 
sickness, manifesting the most tender regard. 
At the fnneral the prince wept freely as he 
gazed upon the face of so revered a friend, 
and he afterwards erected a monument to "the 
memory of Father Schwartz," which was exe- 
cuted by the celebrated sculptor, Flaxman. 
On the monument the rajah is represented as 
grasping the hand of the dying missionary and 
receiving his benediction. The traveler will 
find it in the old garrison church, no longer 
used, at Tanjore. 1 

But the most impressive monuments to our 
missionary are the results of his labor. At 
and near Trichinopoly alone were three thou- 
sand reputed converts gathered in through the 
agency of this faithful man. Bishop Heber 
estimates the number in the whole district at 
between six and seven thousand. It is a nota- 
ble circumstance that while religious decline 
was going on in his native country — pastors 
and people not a few settling down into spirit- 
ual torpor, if not giving themselves over to 
avowed rationalism — this man in a far-off land 
of heathenism should be toiling indefatigably 
and successfully to the last, respected by his 
employers and employees, his colleagues and 
pupils, by Germans and Danes, by princes and 
Pariahs, by Christians, heathens, and Moham- 



1 Note 39. 



202 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

medans. Seldom has there been an instance of 
a man securing the respect of parties so unlike 
— military officers and civilians in the English 
service, a sanguinary and suspicious Oriental 
tyrant, as well as that tyrant's outraged and 
timid subjects. 

"They that be wise shall shine as the bright- 
ness of the firmament, and they that turn many 
to righteousness as the stars forever and ever." 
The same year that this devoted missionary fin- 
ished his course a countryman of his, the as- 
tronomer royal of England, discovered four new 
satellites belonging to the Georgium Sidus. On 
the scale of celestial estimates whose fame will 
be most enduring — that of the titled Sir Wil- 
liam Herschel or the plain Christian Frederick 
Schwartz ? 



CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 203 



CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 



LECTURE IX. — TRANQUEBAR MISSION. 

( Concluded.) 

Our last lecture was devoted to Christian 
Frederick Schwartz, the representative German 
missionary, more widely known than any other 
of the eighteenth century and who ranks with 
Eliot, Brainerd, Zeisberger, and Carey. When 
the mission at Trichinopoly was established 
(1767) he passed, as before mentioned, into the 
employ of the English Society for Promoting 
Christian Knowledge, and his official connection 
with the Danish work and with Tranquebar 
ceased. It seemed, however, due to him and 
to the demands of general narrative that the 
survey of his life should not be arrested at 
that point. 

The lines of demarcation between the several 
fields of evangelistic work in the peninsula and 
between the responsibilities of employees were 
not at that period well denned. At times only 
this is clear — that the relations of Christian la- 
borers in Southern India to patrons in Europe 



204 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

were vague and somewhat fluctuating. Most 
writers appear not to have kept in mind the 
exact sphere of the Danish mission ; but, in 
treating the history of evangelistic work in the 
Madras Presidency, have spoken of the later 
services of men who had left the 

^ at ^° e ns Tranquebar field as if they were 
still in their old connection. It 
is no unusual thing for biography to leave 
us with some historical misconceptions. The 
strictly Danish work in the southern peninsula 
was limited to Tranquebar and its immediate 
neighborhood. It continued about one hun- 
dred and forty years. In 1845 the Danish pos- 
session (Tranquebar) was ceded to the English 
East India Company, and the mission has now 
for a long time been conducted by the Dres- 
den-Leipzig Society. 

The death of Schwartz marks an epoch in 
the course of Protestant missions in that part 
of India. Thence onward decay became more 
and more evident. After the date of his de- 
cease only five missionaries of the Danish 
society went to India. While at 
that period the religious condition 
of India was improving, such improvement had 
hardly begun in Germany, and as is Germany 
such substantially is Denmark. During the 
great spiritual decline of those countries it 
could not be expected that their missionaries 



CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION". 205 

would wholly escape the contagious torpor. As 
early as 1793 Christian Frederick John wrote 
home from Tranquebar, "A new honest mis- 
sionary would be a great help to us, but if no 
suitable man can be found it is better for us 
to die out." The mission was not harmonious 
within itself 1 nor on pleasant terms with the 
local government. Denmark having become in- 
volved in the general European war then rag- 
ing her East India possessions were exposed to 
attack. Tranquebar was captured by the Eng- 
lish (1801), and remittances from home were 
interrupted. The restoration of the place a 
year later to Denmark did not restore pros- 
perity to the mission. Various concurrent 
causes led to a continued abatement of evan- 
gelistic work, from which there was never more 
than a partial recovery. 2 The sentiment of 
Danish residents, some of whom had become 
infected with French infidelity, was, of course, 
adverse to attempts at converting the heathen. 
The local government proposed that the mis- 
sion should cease as an institution for that 
purpose, and in 1825 a royal rescript, placing 
it on a new footing, ordained that the pastor- 
ate of Zion Church in Tranquebar and the 
office of first missionary be united. It will in- 
dicate to what a low level Danish sentiment 



I Note 40. 
2 iS'ote 41. 



206 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

had sunk, that the order should contain a dec- 
laration such as this, " The spiritual pastors 
who bear the name ; missionary ' in Tranquebar 
are to make effort for the conversion of the 
heathen only where the moral character of 
the persons seems to call for it, but they are 
not to expect any money to be spent on the 
extension of Christianity." What but extinc- 
tion of all missionary work could be looked 
for where such views prevailed? 

One sad experience of the Christian explorer 
is to find the tombstones of evangelical en- 
terprises, whether on the site of the seven 
churches of Asia, of the once flourishing 
churches in Northern Africa, or of missions 
like that at Tranquebar. Deplorable decay 

has been spoken of. May not an 
ecay exaggerated impression have been 

made? The facts of the case, 
as they lie on the surface, appear to admit 
of no other representation. Testimonies from 
without concur. 1 Messrs. Tyerman and Ben- 
net, a deputation from the London Missionary 
Society, in their Journal 2 (1821-1829), say of 
Tanjore that no vital religion was to be found 
in any of the native priests and people ; that 
the cankerworm of caste had destroyed every- 
thing that resembles true religion, only a form 

"Note 42. 

2 Vol. II, pp. 462-464. 



CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 207 

being left; and that the Tranquebar Mission 
was in the same sad condition. Ten years 
later (1837) Dr. Howard Malcolm, who visited 
the American Baptist missions in the East, 
though passing near Tranquebar, did not deem 
it worth while to stop — it being the current 
opinion of competent judges then in Southern 
India that there was almost no visible effect 
of missionary labor remaining there. 1 "As to 
Schwartz's people in Tanjore," says Lord Ma- 
caulay 2 (1834), "they are a perfect scandal to 
the religion they profess." We do not account 
Thomas Babington Macaulay the most compe- 
tent witness concerning the religious character 
of native Christians in India; yet, with a meas- 
ure of exaggeration, not infrequent on his part, 
he reflects the average sentiment of English 
residents then on the ground. 

It becomes a grave question, What led to 
such an apparent failure at last ? So far as 
the particular responsibility of Schwartz is con- 
cerned it should be borne in mind that at the 
period last referred to he had been in his 
grave more than thirty years. It should also 
be remembered that in the earlier stages of 
the Tranquebar Mission there was much more 
evangelical earnestness and fidelity than in the 
later stages. Still from the first, as in the 



Malcolm's Travels, II, pp. 60-62. 

Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, I, pp. 332, 333. 



208 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

early Dutch missions, there was this mischie- 
vous mistake — that evidence of regeneration 
need not be required of those who were ad- 
mitted to Christian ordinances; that these may 
be administered to persons who profess only a 
mental assent to the historical facts and the 
truths of Christianity, about which, however, 
candidates do not need to know very much. 
The notion was entertained that natives once 
baptized would be more likely to desire further 
Christian instruction and would sooner or later 
become intelligent converts. In 
regard to the ordinances it was 
held that they have mystical efficacy for accom- 
plishing spiritual results; hence that the church 
need not attempt to discriminate carefully be- 
tween the mere nominal Christian and the one 
born again. Such a theory is sufficiently dan- 
gerous in well-educated Christian communities ; 
how much more among an ignorant people, 
almost incapable of conceiving what pure spir- 
itual religion is, and to whom temporal induce- 
ments are held out for the profession of Chris- 
tianity ! A majority of the converts were from 
inferior classes — mere outcasts and slaves. Al- 
most universally aboriginal tribes and lower 
castes are the most hospitable toward the gos- 
pel, and those are the classes among which 
throughout India, to the present time, the gos- 
pel has had greatest success. Low castes and 



CEITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 209 

outcasts furnish not less than four fifths of all 
converts. 1 Natives in such social position could 
hardly fail to look upon the acceptance of the 
faith and forms of their rulers as likely to 
prove advantageous in secular respects ; hence 
the greatest caution was needed to guard 
against mercenary motives. But as temporal 
aid was afforded to converts there would natu- 
rally be awakened in the minds of persons 
looking on a suspicion that they were virtually 
bought, and the epithet " Shilling Christians " 
gained currency. Supplies ceasing, converts 
fell away. The missionaries were obliged to 
confess that many of the baptized failed to 
give evidence of any moral reformation. 2 The 
tour of Gericke, when he visited (1802) the 
districts lying south toward Cape Comorin — ■ 
though not belonging himself to Tranquebar 
— illustrates the unwise readiness, especially of 
later German missionaries, to administer the 
rite of baptism. The people had been suffering 
much from political disturbances and were en- 
tertaining unwarranted hopes of amelioration 
from a change of religion. Accordingly whole 
villages demolished their idols, turned their 
temples into churches, and received baptism — 
scores upon scores in a day — at the tourist's 
hands. During that journey the good man, 



x Note 43. 
2 Note 44. 



210 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

zealous and credulous, baptized thirteen hun- 
dred, and immediately afterwards the native 
teachers baptized two thousand and seven hun- 
dred more. Most of them, however, had but 
little knowledge of what the Christian religion 
is, and had still less of its spirit. As in mili- 
tary invasions, so in missionary operations it is 
much easier to overrun than to hold a wide 
extent of territory. At Tranquebar converts 
were taught the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Com- 
mandments, together with the words of the in- 
stitution of both sacraments, and many of them 
appear to have given unquestionable evidence 
of conversion. Some of them stood the test 
of persecution; while, on the other hand, too 
many seem never to have advanced beyond a 
mere outward rite. Our satisfaction, then, at 
statistical results suffers abatement when we 
read that by the first jubilee of this mission 
(1756) eleven thousand persons had embraced 
the gospel, and that at the close of a hundred 
years perhaps fifty thousand had received bap- 
tism. As a whole they bore a different char- 
acter from more recent native Christians of 
Northern India, for instance, who, in the main, 
stood firm during the mutiny of 1857. 

Another mistake of the Danish mission in 
India was an unauthorized toleration of caste 
among the converts. This subject was alluded 
to in our last lecture. We grant that it is 



CEITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 211 

one of delicacy and difficulty, that something 
must be conceded to the inexperience of early 
missionaries. Yet even after thirty years' ac- 
quaintance with this evil the mission wrote, in 
regard to their useful and excellent catechist, 
Rajanaiken, " We should greatly hesitate to 
have the Lord's Supper administered by him, 
lest it should diminish the regard of Christians 
of a higher caste for that sacrament itself." 
It needs but a short acquaintance with such 
a bane of social life to learn its essential an- 
tagonism to the spirit of Christ. 
Surely an institution which teaches 
that one part of a community belongs to a 
superior race ; that Pariahs are born to be 
slaves; that the two classes may not live in 
the same street, eat from the same vessel, drink 
from the same cup — even the sacramental cup 
— or occupy the same seats in the house of 
God; which forbids intermarriages between the 
two castes; which insists upon separate sections 
in the burial ground; which forbids a high 
caste congregation to receive a low caste re- 
ligious teacher; and would persuade the mis- 
sionary clergyman to partake of the sacred 
supper last, that none of the communicants 
might be contaminated — such an institution 
needs no long debate to determine whether it 
shall be tolerated in the Christian Church. 
By condoning this mischievous element nomi- 



212 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

nal conversions were multiplied, but Christian- 
ity was dishonored. Dr. C. F. John, one of 
the later missionaries at Tranquebar, greatly 
distressed by this antichristian practice, deter- 
mined to put an end to such odious distinc- 
tions — at least as relates to the Lord's Table 
and so far as his responsibility was concerned. 
He melted into one the two cups that were 
used, and thus for once settled that matter. 
The excellent Schwartz erred with others in 
regard to caste. If this demon had been exor- 
cised at the outset the subsequent history of 
Southern India would have been materially dif- 
ferent. At present the only German society 
known to wink at this deformity is the Lu- 
theran Society of Leipzig, which is in sympa- 
thy with the High Church element in England. 
That society's agents have little fellowship with 
other missionaries and do not formally join in 
conferences. They are significantly exclusive, 
and often set territorial comity at defiance, 
introducing schools and catechists into fields 
long occupied by evangelical laborers. Litur- 
gical and sacramentarian bodies seem somewhat 
generally to entertain the thought that it is 
their sphere, letting others undertake initial 
drudgery and hardships, to come in later and 
gather the fruits into their sectarian garner. 
Conservative of abuses, and carrying on a su- 
perficial system of proselytism, they render it 



CKITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 213 

difficult for neighboring missions to maintain 
proper discipline in their churches. It should 
be added that native Roman Catholics also 
kept up an observance of caste as rigidly as 
the heathen. The Sudra, with the gold ring, 
embroidered dress, and cashmere turban, puffed 
up with pride of birth, was invited to sit in 
the high places of the church; while the poor 
Christian Pariah was bidden to stand in the 
doorway, taking care that he should by no 
means touch with his unclean body the gar- 
ments of his holy superior ! l 

It was a further mistake that the mission 
did not ordain more native pastors. For many 
years there were none. The schools had been 
looked to as nurseries for the ministry, but 
therein they failed, and this is by no means a 
solitary instance of the kind. Catechists were 
to some extent supplied by the 
Tranquebar schools, yet very few * tlv ^ 

natives came forward to whom the 
missionaries deemed it fitting to intrust the 
sacred office. Suitable men evidently were not 
numerous, and when permission to ordain na- 
tives was at length asked from the home author- 
ities it could be obtained only after long delay. 
In the Tranquebar Mission proper only half a 
dozen — if so many — natives received ordina- 
tion during a period of a century and a half. 

1 Mullen's Missions in Southern India, p. 77. 



214 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

Not till towards half a century since was the 
importance of establishing local churches and a 
native pastorate duly appreciated among the 
various missions of India, but within the period 
named a noteworthy development in that direc- 
tion has taken place. It began among the mis- 
sions of the American Board (1855), and it 
marks an epoch in foreign evangelistic work. 
The results, as seen in the extent to which 
native Christians, and especially their preachers, 
rise from the condition of pupilage, acquiring 
strength and independence of character, are 
truly encouraging. 

Disproportionate outlay upon schools was an- 
other mistake. The Germans are almost consti- 
tutionally educators, and the Lutheran Church 
is eminently an educating church. It was natu- 
ral that these experimenting missionaries should 
early devote themselves to gathering schools. 
We find Ziegenbalg writing in 
1706: "Truly the training up of 
children will be of the greatest consequence 
in this affair, if we were but able to purchase 
and maintain a good many of them." " We 
must buy such children, sometimes at a high 
price, from their parents." z His successors la- 
bored largely in the same line — not, indeed, 
of purchasing pupils, but of securing them at 

Baylor's Protestant Missions at Madras. Introduction, pp. 
iv, v. 



CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 215 

all events. They looked to this source for 
an effective Christian element, but the hope 
proved fallacious ; and so it is always liable to 
do if the boarding school displaces an earnest 
oral publication of the gospel. When the mis- 
sionary merges himself into the schoolmaster, 
when touring is wholly relinquished for the 
more comfortable routine of pedagogy — then 
aggression and spiritual advance, present and 
prospective alike, may be expected to suffer. 
Decline had proceeded far in this mission when 
Dr. John opened his school for Europeans in- 
stead of native Tamulians, and when (1824) 
the local government proposed that mission 
schools should cease altogether as an institu- 
tion for securing converts and that mission- 
aries should give themselves merely to incul- 
cating useful knowledge. 

It is almost a corollary that excessive inter- 
est was felt in matters of science. Quite possi- 
bly in our day, too, a disproportionate value 
may be placed on the incidental benefits of 
Christian missions ; and mission- 
aries may sometimes be beguiled " or mate 
into an undue expenditure of 
strength on the auxiliary studies of lexicogra- 
phy, mythology, and the like. Works have 
come from such pens so elaborate as to be 
read by heathen Hindus simply for the pur- 
pose of becoming better acquainted with their 



216 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

own systems. Bottler's collection in botany, 
John's collection in conchology, and Klein's 
collection in ornithology and entomology be- 
came famous. Eight learned societies in Eu- 
rope elected these men members. In the year 
1795 Messrs. John and Rottler received, as an 
acknowledgment of their high attainments and 
valuable contributions to natural history, the 
honorary degree of Doctor of Physical Sci- 
ences. When such side studies are carried on 
simply as a recreation it may be well; when 
they trench upon time and interest which 
should be consecrated to immediate Christian 
work their results are rather a reflection than 
an encomium on the missionary. If Paul had 
left behind him immortal treatises on the Greek 
language, poetry, and philosophy, or on Roman 
jurisprudence, would he not have been obliged 
to expunge passages from his inspired writings 
which the world cannot afford to lose, and 
which would be a greater loss than the loss of 
the most elaborate scientific works ever pro- 
duced? "For I am determined not to know 
anything among you save Jesus Christ and him 
crucified;" "Yea, doubtless, and I count all 
things but loss for the excellency of the knowl- 
edge of Jesus Christ my Lord." 

The mission encountered great obstacles, some 
of them peculiar to itself, for which it was not 
responsible. These related in part to the period 



CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 217 

and the country. For a considerable time there 
were disturbances and violence. One native 
prince after another would claim sovereignty 
over the region. Hycler Ali, with a hundred 
thousand men, sweeps down the Carnatic like 
a tornado, leaving ruin in his track. Every 
European war was attended by an Indian out- 
break, just as an eruption of Etna is attended 
by simultaneous activity among volcanoes in 
the East. Now a French fleet, and now an 
English, appear off the coast. Missionary oper- 
ations, as well as supplies from 
Europe, are impeded, sometimes ° ll *? a 

suspended. Famine, that twin de- 
mon of war, makes its appearance. In 1782 
such destitution prevailed in this small Dan- 
ish territory alone that ten thousand perished. 
Numbers dying daily in the streets of Tran- 
quebar were left to be buried at public ex- 
pense. When the quiet pursuits of husbandry 
are interrupted, even in time of peace, any 
country like Southern India, where agriculture 
depends upon irrigation, will suffer from famine. 
Whenever the gospel takes effect among the 
heathen persecution usually ensues. It has been 
so from the first in Hindustan. It is so today, 
though now the consolidation of English power 
prevents, in some good measure, those more 
open and flagrant acts of cruelty once so com- 
mon. If the missionaries were harassed by 



218 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

their own government, what must have been 
the condition of converts under tyrannical 
native rule? Heathen authorities could not 
be relied upon to protect converts from the 
Roman Catholics. Ecclesiastics were sent with 
an express charge from the pope to "root out 
the Protestants from Tranquebar," and they 
were only too true to their commission. Take 
a specimen. Rajanaiken, a faithful catechist, 
who had been converted from the Romish 
faith, joined the evangelical church (1728), 
but it cost the father his life. A 

Persecution. . „ , . . , 

number 01 armed papists made 
an attack, and while the old man was endeav- 
oring to defend his youngest son from the 
murderers he himself sank under their blows 
and died two hours afterwards. His other sons 
exposed the corpse at the gate of the town, 
hoping to attract attention, but they had no 
money to give ; hence could obtain no justice. 
The assassins afterwards confessed that they 
acted upon the instigation of priests, who 
offered a reward in heaven to all who should 
merit it by exterminating these heretics. Re- 
peated attempts were made upon the life of 
Rajanaiken. His wife once threw herself be- 
tween him and a drawn sword. At two dif- 
ferent times the Romanists beat this catechist 
till they left him for dead upon the road. 
Beschi, the Jesuit, was known to instigate such 



CEITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 219 

outrages. 1 Speaking of a catechist in his day 
whom persecutors had beaten to a senseless 
condition Schwartz remarked, " They are of 
their father, the devil, and the pope." 

Another class of embarrassments had respect 
to home administration. The difficulty was in- 
herent. This Danish mission, composed chiefly 
of German laborers, received much pecuniary 
aid and considerable advice from England. 
The superintendence was nominally at Copen- 
hagen, really at Halle ; while funds came from 
Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and 
England. Relations so diverse and 
complicated could hardly fail to cause per- 
plexity. Harmony all around would have been 
well-nigh a miracle. The reports from Tran- 
quebar were published at Halle — Copenhagen 
publishing nothing originally, being content to 
receive information through that channel. Al- 
most all depends upon the man, not upon the 
home administration, however it may be com- 
posed. Two of the more able and success- 
ful missionaries of this period (Schwartz and 
Gericke) were in no very intimate executive 
relations to any body of men in Europe. 

Differences in religious sentiment and differ- 
ences of national feeling existed among the 
missionaries. The pietism of Saxony never 

x Even Pope Benedict XIV pronounced the Jesuit fathers 
inobedientes, contumaces, captiosi, et perditi homines. 



220 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

gained any wide acceptance in Denmark; yet 
a majority of the missionaries, the earlier ones 
especially, were Halle students, and, happily, 
bore the impress of that institution — a circum- 
stance, however, which did not conciliate Dan- 
ish sympathy. By the close of the century 
more than fifty missionaries had gone out. 
The predominance of German blood and the 
German language among them served to create 
embarrassments. It was nothing strange that 
the Danish element should find occasion for 
criticism. In our day it is sometimes the 
case that persons of diverse training and social 
habits fail to work harmoniously in the same 
mission. 

Royal patronage, though at the time and 
under the circumstances deemed to be of great 
importance, was hardly a help on the whole. 
In that age the traditional idea prevailed that 
everything great and good must, to be success- 
ful, have the support of govern- 
tate ment. The present facility of or- 

ganizing did not exist; indeed, it 
had hardly dawned upon the minds of men 
that for many purposes private persons have 
a perfect right to associate, and that they can 
accomplish their objects better in the absence 
of endowment and interference of every kind 
from civil powers. Now throughout the civi- 
lized world the drift — here and there amount- 



CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 221 

ing to a struggle — is to secure a free church 
in a free state. King Frederick meant well, 
but the missionaries were led to expect too 
much from royal orders. Mandates from the 
home government had but little influence in 
rectifying abuses at Tranquebar. Rendering 
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, men 
must beware of expecting from Csesar what 
can come only from God. 

One embarrassment which the missionaries 
met with was peculiarly trying — the pernicious 
influence of many European residents who bore 
the name of Christians. This is an obstacle 
which in every part of the world, more especially 
at the great emporiums of trade and wherever 
European commerce or arms extend, has been 
encountered. Throughout the mari- 
time regions of the East Indies and ^ L °. m ! na 

° Christians. 

the island groups of the Pacific, 
other things equal, Christian work has been 
successful in the ratio of distance from Euro- 
pean and American nominal Christians. If in 
the early days of New England, with a ruling 
sentiment so strongly in favor of pure religion 
and sound morality, John Eliot found occasion 
to complain of the evil influences exerted upon 
the Indians by unprincipled men, how much 
more urgent must be the occasion where no 
restraints of public opinion or of law exist! 
It is notorious that the morals of Portuguese, 



222 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

Dutch, Danes, and English in the East have 
largely been a reproach to the Christian name. 1 
Though calling themselves Christians they are 
such, not by holding the distinctive doctrines 
of our religion, but because in the general 
census of the world they are not classed as 
Jews, Mohammedans, or idolaters. Englishmen 
were then wont to say that they left their reli- 
gion at the Cape of Good Hope on the way 
out, which they could pick up on the way back 
to Europe. What religion those men had was 
not likely to enrich South Africa in the mean- 
time. Sir Monier Williams remarks, "I doubt, 
however, whether the worst Indians are ever so 
offensive in their vices as the worst type of 
low, unprincipled Europeans." 2 When a cer- 
tain European, who had been a terror and a 
disgrace to a district in Southern India, died 
the natives habitually offered brandy and cigars 
at his tomb to propitiate his spirit, which was 
supposed to be still wandering about with bad 
intentions. 3 It is not yet a century since Cap- 
tain William Bruce wrote to Southey that if 
our empire in India were overthrown the only 
monuments that would remain of us would be 
broken bottles and corks. Schwartz declares 
that in his earlier acquaintance' with India lie 



x Note 45. 

2 Modern India, p. 128. 

3 Modern India, p. 136. 



CBITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 223 

sought in vain for a pious European. Later 
missionaries have sometimes confessed to much 
the same. 1 There was not a precept of their 
own religion' which the natives did not observe, 
nor a precept of Christianity which some Euro- 
peans did not disregard. What could the hon- 
est servants of Christ do in the midst of such 
harassing retorts as were made by the Hindus? 
"When I was once talking to them," writes 
Ziegenbalg, "and seemed to have reached their 
consciences, they answered me, 'If you Chris- 
tians, with your eating and drinking, your for- 
nication and adultery, your cursing and swear- 
ing, and your wicked lives, expect to be saved, 
surely we, with our quiet, orderly lives, may 
hope for it also, even if our religion be false 
and altogether a fabrication.'" 

Failures on the score of Christian character 
occurred among missionaries themselves. At 
Tranquebar, of about half a hundred men, 2 
there were several who made shipwreck. 3 Per- 
versions even to heathen beliefs have occurred. 
Colonel Vans Kenneday, for instance, an Ori- 
ental scholar, was understood by the Hindus 
to have become a believer in their religion. 
Strange as it may seem, one of the earliest 
converts secured by Rammohun Roy was an 



1 Arthur's Missions to Mysore, p. 65. 

2 From 1706 to 1819, fifty-four. 

3 Note 46. 



224 PKOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

English missionary sent out by the Baptist 
Society. 1 

One dark spot in the history of every church 
which has organic connection with the state is 
the inevitable absence of discipline. Nothing 
but a sense of historical justice could reconcile 
us to direct the eye to such blots as have now 
been mentioned. It is hardly necessary, and yet 
very gratifying, to add that in later years there 
has been a great improvement; that the riot- 
ous living and gross vices of earlier times have 
been largely corrected; that, whereas author- 
ities, civil and military, formerly to no incon- 
siderable extent patronized idolatry, there have 
been and are now men of high positions who 
maintain a decidedly Christian character and 
second Christian endeavors. Both hither India 
and farther India furnish noble illustrations. 
The names of Robert N. Cust, LL.D.; of Brig- 
adier Parsons and Brigadier Nicholson; of Ma- 
jor General Sir Herbert Edwardes, General Sir 
Henry Havelock, General Sir Henry Lawrence, 
and General Sir Robert Phayre; of Sir Robert 
Grant and Sir Bartle Frere, governor of Bom- 
bay; of Lord Lawrence and Lord Northbrook, 

1 James Vaughan: The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. 
London, 1876. Pp. 209, 210. "Which is only a little less re- 
markable than the fact that an unlettered Zulu should be 
able to shake the faith of an English prelate ! Doubtless the 
same reason will stand good in either case — the faith thus 
Bhaken was very shaky to begin with." 



CRITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 225 

governors general of India, are to be mentioned 
with special honor. 1 

But there were direct results which it is 
cheering to contemplate. Of the missionaries 
sent out to India during all this long period 
only twenty-four labored exclusively at Tran- 
quebar. Many thousands, as we have seen, 
were admitted to the church. What propor- 
tion of these were truly converted it is, of 
course, impossible to say, but probably a 
large number. Among more immediate results 
should be named the rise of other 

stations or missions, north, west, ^ esu * £ 
' ' ' Direct. 

and south — at Cuddalore (1737), 
at Madras (1726), at Trichinopoly and Tanjore 
(1767), at Negapatam (1732), at Palamcotta 
(1785), also an unsuccessful attempt on the 
Nicobar Islands (1756). Tranquebar became 
the mother of missions, which, however, in their 
infancy were adopted by the English Christian 
Knowledge Society, some of them never hav- 
ing properly a distinctive Danish existence. 2 
Chiefly to the influence of this mission must 
be ascribed the cessation of slavery among the 
Danes, which was effected in 1745. The press 
also, through the Bible and other treasures in 
Christian literature, exerted a sensible influence 
in purifying and elevating a portion of the 



J Note 47. 
2 Note 48. 



226 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

native community. Books from this source — 
then the solitary Protestant source — found 
their way to Ceylon, to Bombay, and to the 
northern Circars. Today there are numerous 
presses in India. Books and tracts are fur- 
nished in more than thirty languages and dia- 
lects; while thousands of copies of God's Word 
are issued annually, the aggregate of portions 
or the whole volume of Sacred Scriptures 
amounting already to millions. The Tranque- 
bar stock decayed and lost nearly all its vital- 
ity, yet it lives in offshoots, as branches from 
the banyan may thrive though the original 
trunk be dead. 

There were incidental results of considerable 
moment. The reacting influence at home of 
any mission is to be regarded as second in 
importance only to what it accomplishes in the 
foreign field. Denmark herself derived but lit- 
tle benefit comparatively from this evangelistic 

operation. And no wonder ! The 
R e ^ x enterprise was almost purely an 

affair of the Danish court, not of 
the Danish people. Whatever the crown is 
known to favor will, as a matter of fashion, 
have a certain amount of consideration; but 
this work among the heathen never took hold 
of the hearts of the people. It was a royal 
undertaking, for which another nationality had 
to be subsidized at the outset, and in the 



CEITIQUE UPOin THE MISSION. 227 

service of which no Dane ever became promi- 
nent. Danish missionaries were unwilling to 
engage for a life service, and demanded, after 
a few years in Tranquebar, some lucrative situ- 
ation at home. 1 The missionary college was 
rather a bureau of the civil government than 
an affair of the church. Neither the court nor 
the community at home was ever very much 
moved by this enterprise. One can hardly 
help calling to mind the fact that in the Baltic 
Sea the water has comparatively a small pro- 
portion of salt and that there is almost no 
flux or reflux. Except now and then a ripple 
of detraction, indifference seems to have pre- 
vailed. Dr. Liitkens retained the superintend- 
ence while he lived, but upon his decease the 
Bishop of Zealand would have nothing to do 
with it, and an occasional pamphlet appeared 
reflecting upon the enterprise or upon the 
agents employed in it. Only an inconsiderable 
benefit from foreign missions can accrue, in the 
way of reaction, to any church or community 
which does not study the subject, feel the re- 
sponsibility, and have at least a large share in 
furnishing missionaries and their supplies. 

The reacting influence of the mission in Ger- 
many was more apparent and proportionately 
more valuable. True, from the first there were 
those in the universities and elsewhere who 



1 Gerrnann : Missionar Schwartz, p. 184. 



228 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

derided the enterprise and showed the bitter- 
ness of a most unchristian prejudice. 1 Still, 
reports of the good work were widely read, 
and the missionary spirit then centering in 
Halle never wholly died out in Germany, 
though it approached the point of extinction. 
But for these smoldering embers there might 
have been no such rekindling as has been 
witnessed within the last three quarters of a 
century. 

England, too, shared happily in the indirect 
benefits. As we have seen, some of the early 
missionaries hailing from Denmark visited Lon- 
don on their way out and were kindly re- 
ceived; abstracts of the Tranquebar correspond- 
ence were issued from the English press; 
dignitaries of the English Church — notably 
Archdeacon Wake — manifested a laudable in- 
terest. From the Reformation onward there has 
been a measure of religious sympathy between 
Germany and England. About the middle of 
the last century Frederick the Great was court- 
ing the alliance of England — an alliance which 
became popular. The House of Brunswick hav- 
ing come to the English throne, a mission so 
largely German might be expected on that 
account to receive all the more consideration. 
Ziegenbalg wrote to George I, and the king 
sent two letters to the mission. The Christian 



Note 49. 



CEITIQUE UPON THE MISSION. 229 

Knowledge Society made a special arrangement 
for receiving funds in aid of the good work, 
manifesting a persistent interest in the evan- 
gelization of India. Contributions of money, 
books, and paper were sent out, as well as 
the press previously mentioned. The greatly 
revived interest in the evangelization of India 
and other heathen lands which sprang up in 
England at the close of the eighteenth century 
was partly a result of Danish and German 
labors in the southern peninsula. 

Time was when Danes levied tribute on the 
English; when they restrained all English ship- 
ping from trade in Norway, save at one port 
(1429) ; and when, in the tenth century, three 
archbishops of Danish family presided over the 
English Church. But we have now seen Eng- 
lish ships conveying Danish missionaries and 
English patronage helping to keep alive a Dan- 
ish movement — one of the pioneer Christian 
enterprises of modern times. The Head of the 
Church appears to have accepted this Chris- 
tian kindliness, and to have treated it as the 
grain of mustard seed which was to grow into 
the wide-branching tree of present British mis- 
sions among the heathen. 

One incidental result remains to be noticed 
— that of spiritual benefit to European resi- 
dents in the East. Many of them, both in the 
civil and military service, have been greatly 



230 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

blessed in their religious life by the public 
services and private intercourse of missionaries. 1 
The Scottish widow has rejoiced over a trans- 
formed prodigal: "He was dead, but is alive 
again; he was lost, but is found." 2 "I was 
born," said one, "and reared in Britain, a land 
of light, where I lived in darkness. In Ceylon, 
a land of darkness, I have been made partaker 
of the light of life." Others not a few can 
say the same concerning those heathen lands 
where faithful missionaries are found, and they 
in turn become Christian workers. 

Resident q^ q ^ ^ mogt use f u i ass i s tant 
Europeans. 

Wesley an missionaries in the island 
of Ceylon came to a knowledge of the truth 
through the instrumentality of a pious soldier, 
who was himself the fruit of missionary labor 
on that island. Native soldiers have sometimes 
become Christian converts, although time was 
when that brought down oppression from the 
government of India as severe as it would 
from heathen sources. For example, there was 
a well-known case at Meerut of such a man in 
the ranks who, on being brought before a mili- 
tary court, was reported as a dangerous charac- 
ter and removed from the regiment. Schwartz 
once declined to receive the legacy which a 
grateful English convert had left him lest his 



1 Pearson's Memoir of Schwartz, pp. 73, 91, 106, 111. 

2 William Campbell : British India, London, 1839. P. 176. 



CKITIQTTE UPON THE MISSION. 231 

motives should be impeached. Colonel Bie, the 
governor at Serampore, had enjoyed the instruc- 
tion and religious influence of Schwartz, and 
was thus prepared to shelter missionaries whom 
the East India Company were so reluctant to 
see in Bengal. It was to William Chambers — 
who had been brought to Christ through the 
instrumentality of Schwartz — on removing to 
Calcutta that Charles Grant owed his conver- 
sion, and Charles Grant was the first man con- 
nected with the government who became an 
advocate in England for the mental and reli- 
gious improvement of natives in India. It is a 
gratifying circumstance that Lieutenant Wade, 
an aid to the commander in chief at Bombay, 
and who assisted our first missionaries there, 
attributed his conversion to them. 

A scene witnessed from the housetop of one 
of our missionary stations in India comes to 
my recollection with great distinctness. An 
officer of the English Army on his way from 
the interior to the seacoast stopped for an 
hour or two to pay his respects to one of our 
missionary staff. More elegance of person or 
courtliness of manners than those of that Eng- 
lish colonel are seldom met with. The Amer- 
ican Board has perhaps never sent out a man 
of such elephantine figure and movement as 
the missionary referred to. When the moment 
of leave-taking came I happened to be looking 



232 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

down from the flat roof of the house, and 
never did a loving Timothy shed tears more 
profusely or greet " Paul the aged " with a 
" holy kiss " more ardent than were bestowed 
by the once proud Englishman on that rough 
American, his spiritual father. 



HANS EGEDE. 233 



HANS EGEDE. 



LECTURE X. — DANISH GREENLAND MISSION. 

And now from tropical to arctic regions. 
Even the extreme north has its fascination. 
The barriers which surround it and the mys- 
teries which hang over it, so far from deter- 
ring, only stimulate one class of adventurers. 
Since the time of Columbus more skill and 
intrepidity have been displayed in arctic ex- 
ploration than perhaps in all 

,, , . -,.,. Arctic Regions, 

other exploring expeditions com- 
bined. The hope of discovering a northwest 
or a northeast passage, and of thus opening a 
shorter way to the Indies, has for nearly four 
hundred years moved different governments to 
engage in this line of search. Learned socie- 
ties have lent their aid, while for many of 
those who personally embark there is a charm 
in the very magnitude of difficulties. The se- 
crets of that inclement polar world appeal to 
the heroic in noble natures. The men most 
likely to volunteer for a new expedition are 



234 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

men who have already experienced northern 
rigors. The fact that more than a hundred 
and thirty expeditions have proved failures, or 
that a passage if found would be of small prac- 
tical value, does not check renewed attempts; 
nor will Captain Nares' report of a steady 
temperature at sixty degrees below zero and 
of common ice one hundred and fifty feet 
thick deter adventure while there remains so 
broad a tract which man has never visited. 
Look in upon Captain Parry, braving the ex- 
treme polar cold for two years on Melville 
Island ; read Kane's narrative of his explora- 
tions or the narrative of Greeley's expedition, 
and say if these can be surpassed by any 
record of human endurance. 

Beyond the arctic circle one finds himself 
where there are only two seasons to the year, 
one of light and one of darkness — a day of 
eight months and a night of four months, a 
night, however, that is relieved by brilliant 
auroras. And what shall we say of the cold? 
Explorers have found that no later than the 
first of October and no higher than latitude 
seventy-five strong drinks turn to ice and 
burst the vessels, and that even spirits of 
wine thicken and become like congealed oil. 
When one boils water it often first freezes 
over the fire till heat gains the mastery. 1 Be- 



1 Cranz's History of Greenland, p. 43. 



HANS EGEDE. 235 

fore ice begins to form along the coast the 
sea smokes and produces a mist called frost- 
smoke, which has the effect of blistering the 
skin. Quite superfluous is it to say that 
even in the more favored southern portions 
of Greenland vegetation is scanty and stunted. 
The tallest trees are but eighteen feet high. 1 
Of forests there are none. 

Why has the Creator so disposed physical 
forces as to produce such a region? Why 
attach such a crystal pendant to the extreme 
frozen north, a polar trinacria, mere clusters 
of barren rocks swathed with eternal ice, 
scarcely accessible on its eastern coast, and 
on its western presenting a rampart that 
frowns upon all approach? "Whatsoever the 
Lord pleaseth that did he in heaven and in 
earth, in the seas and in all deep places." 
The same sovereign will that would have 
Europe without a desert would have Green- 
land the one that is only a desert. The sunny 
south may not say to arctic regions, "I have 
no need of you ; " nor does it behoove the one 
third land surface of our globe to wonder at 
the two thirds water surface. The law of dif- 
ferences reigns everywhere, and is indispensable 
in the great economy of nature. Owing to 
diversities of temperature oceanic currents keep 



Note 60. 



236 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

polar and tropical waters in a constant inter- 
change, preserving their purity and softening 
what would otherwise be destructive extremes. 
The divine Architect has ordained an immense 
stretch of ice as a beneficent refrigerator for 
other latitudes. 

Early in the last century the germ of a new 
settlement and of a new Christian movement 
came into being. That germ was a thought in 
the mind of Hans Egede. The persistence of 
benevolent purpose displayed by him in finding 
his way to Greenland and remaining there in 
the face of appalling discouragements entitles 
his history to some measure of detail. He 
was a Norwegian, born 1686, and 
having studied for the sacred office 
at Copenhagen was ordained pastor of a church 
in Vaagen, 1 on the western coast of Norway, 
1707, the year after Ziegenbalg and Pliitschau 
reached Tranquebar. He had read old chron- 
icles relating to his countrymen in Greenland, 
and after a twelvemonth of pastoral labor the 
thought occurred to him that something should 
be done to ascertain their condition and to re- 
claim them if, as he feared, they might have 
relapsed into heathenism. 

Before the close of the seventeenth century 



1 Various readings: Vaage, Vagen, Vogen, Waagen, Wagen, 
etc. 



HAKS EGEDE. 237 

ihree kings had successively entertained the 
purpose of sending out ships to reopen com- 
munication with the lost colony; success was 
reserved for this lonely Protestant pastor. The 
geographical position of Norway favored the 
turn which his thoughts were taking. Its 
northern extremity reaches within the polar 
circle, and its lofty mountain peaks confront 
the Arctic Sea. You have only to strip that 
rugged country of its tall pines and push it up 
farther toward the pole to obtain a repetition 
of Greenland. Indeed, Egede's parish lay in a 
latitude somewhat higher than Cape Farewell. 
Mere curiosity, as he imagines, leads him to 
make inquiries of Bergen shipmasters who are 
engaged in the whale fishery. Musing on the 
condition of supposed forlorn Northmen, de- 
scendants of his own Norwegian forefathers, 
from whom nothing has been heard for a long 
while, he begins to entertain the idea of doing 
something for them. At first such an endeavor 
seems impracticable. A home field of labor 
has been given him; he has a wife and chil- 
dren. Vividly do the sufferings and perils of 
an undertaking like the one which occurs to 
him stand out to view, and he endeavors to 
banish the subject. Egede has not yet come 
distinctly to the consciousness that God is call- 
ing him. The Danish mission to Tranquebar 
had its origin in a crowned head; the Danish 



238 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

mission to Greenland springs from the Chris- 
tian heart of an obscure pastor. 

Brooding over the matter he at length draws 
up a memorial, setting forth Scripture promises 
concerning the conversion of the heathen, the 
command of Christ, the example of many pious 
and learned men, and forwards it to Bishop 
Krog, of Drontheim, and Bishop Randulf, of 
Bergen, with a petition asking them to use 
influence at court in favor of a project for 
Christianizing the Greenlanders. That was 
(1710) just one hundred years before Judson 
and the three Samuels — Samuel 

rovi en 1a jj ewe ]i Samuel Nott, and Sam- 
Leadings. ' * ' 

uel Mills — memorialized the Gen- 
eral Association of Massachusetts regarding a 
mission among the heathen. The next year 
a favorable answer comes from Bishop Krog, 
commending Egede's pious intention and giv- 
ing encouragement of assistance. The bishop's 
geography is, to be sure, somewhat at fault, for 
he remarks that Greenland is in the neighbor- 
hood of Cuba, where Spanish and other col- 
onists found gold, of which a supply might be 
obtained. 1 

Hitherto Egede has kept the matter chiefly 
in his own breast, but through this corre- 
spondence the project becomes known to his 



1 Note 51. 



HANS EGEDE. 239 

friends, who raise vehement opposition. His 
wife, 1 mother, and mother-in-law do their ut- 
most to divert his mind from what appears to 
them a preposterous enterprise. Yielding for 
a time to their tears and remonstrances Egede 
tries to persuade himself that he has labored 
under a delusion, but the words of our Saviour, 
"He that loveth father or mother more than 
me is not worthy of me," stir up a new con- 
flict of feeling. He has no rest in spirit day 
nor night. Local vexations arise at Vaagen 
which at length reconcile his wife to leaving 
the place, and this he regards as providentially 
opening the way. It is suggested that these 
embarrassments may have been sent on account 
of their reluctance to give up all for Christ. 
The wife carries this subject to God in prayer, 
and becomes convinced that she is called to 
embark with her husband in the good work. 
Egede addresses a memorial to the College or 
Board of Missions, which Frederick IV had 
established (1714) at Copenhagen, who urged 
the Bishops of Bergen and Drontheim to sec- 
ond Egede's request. They, however, counseled 
delay till more favorable times. Postponements 
continued, and hence in 1715 he drew up a 
vindication. It was entitled, "A Scriptural 
and Rational Solution and Explanation, with 



Nee Gertrude Rask. 



240 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

regard to the objections and impediments 
raised against the design of converting the 
heathenish Greenlanders." An unappreciative 
world still urged the dangers of the voyage, 
the severity of the climate, the madness of 
exchanging a certain for an uncertain liveli- 
hood, and of exposing wife and children to 
such perils, and finally they resorted to def- 
amation, charging him with selfish motives. 
Egede was a popular preacher, and members 
of other congregations flocked to hear him. 
A neighboring pastor imputed to him the 
fault of empty seats, and hence became a 
detractor. 

Restive under prolonged delays he resolves 
to visit headquarters that he may the better 
prosecute his undertaking. He proposes to re- 
sign his office on condition that his successor 
shall pay an annual pension till he himself is 
provided for in Greenland or elsewhere, but 
no one will accept the benefice 
thus hampered. At length (1718) 
he resigns unconditionally. Hans Egede is the 
only pastor known to history who spent ten 
3'ears in unavailing endeavors to gain access to 
a mission field and at length surrendered his 
charge, still uncertain whether he would be 
able to secure cooperation or reach the desired 
place. Just then comes a rumor that a vessel 
from Bergen has been wrecked on the coast of 



HANS EGEDE. 241 

Greenland, and that the crew were devoured 
by cannibals. But this frightful tale does not 
deter the good man and his wife. She was 
already being disciplined into a Christian her- 
oine, and with their four children they move 
to Bergen, still determined to find a way to 
disparaged Greenland. 

At Bergen Egede meets with the usual ex- 
perience of pioneers in Christian benevolence; 
he is looked upon as a fanatic for abandon- 
ing a comfortable home and starting out upon 
such knight-errantry of benevolence. It be- 
comes necessary to give up the expectation 
of awakening sufficient interest to effect his 
object independently of secular inducements. 
The Greenland trade from Bergen had been 
ruined by the competition of other nations, 
and those to whom he looks for cooperation 
are not prepared for any venture in that line, 
especially so long as the war then existing 
with Sweden lasts. Was it outside the de- 
signs of Providence that precisely at that junc- 
ture (1718) the erratic career of Charles XII 
of Sweden, who had been at war with Den- 
mark, should suddenly come to an end and 
peace ensue? Egede hastens to Copenhagen. 
He presents to the College of Missions his 
memorial, with proposals in which the fact of 
an existing mission to Tranquebar is pleaded 
in behalf of one to Greenland. He obtains a 



242 PROTEST ANT MISSIONS. 

favorable answer and also an interview with 
His Majesty Frederick IV, who listens to his 
proposal. "Seest thou a man diligent in busi- 
ness? He shall stand before kings." 

Success, however, is not yet assured. A 
royal order (November 17, 1719) transmitted 
to Bergen requires a magistrate to collect the 
opinions of commercial men who have been in 
Davis' Strait regarding traffic with Greenland 
and the feasibility of planting a colony there. 
But no one seems favorably disposed, and 
Egede's scheme again becomes a mockery. 
He endeavors to make interest privately with 
individuals, and meets with some success ; but 
the tide turning once more fresh derision is 
his lot. Under obloquy and disappointment 
another year wears away. His heart, however, 
does not fail. The Macedonian cry has been 
wafted to his ear by polar winds. It is some- 
body's business — it is Hans Egede's business — 
to become the apostle of Greenland; otherwise 
would "all the ends of the earth see the sal- 
vation of God?" 

At last a few are touched by his zeal, so 
indefatigable despite repulses and mockeries. 
A capital of two thousand pounds sterling is 
subscribed; the king sends a present of forty 
pounds for the equipment, appoints him pas- 
tor of the new colony and missionary to the 
heathen, with a salary of sixty pounds per 



HANS EGEDE. 243 

annum. A ship called Haabet ("The Hope") 
— the Mayflower of that enterprise — is pur- 
chased, Egede himself subscribing three hun- 
dred dollars. Another is fitted 
out for the whale fishery, and a ncourage- 
third to bring back word from 
the colony. May 12, 1721, one hundred years 
after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Egede, 
with his wife and four children, embarks. 
He leads an expedition numbering about forty 
souls. 

Thirteen years had he been meditating and 
praying over the enterprise, and ten years had 
he toiled for the opportunity to embark on this 
forlorn hope. We are reminded of the most 
illustrious of navigators. Not till after many 
years, of poverty and repulses, of distrust and 
suspected lunacy, did Columbus find a happy 
juncture. The fall of Grenada left the Span- 
ish court at leisure to listen. Ferdinand's 
mandate to the authorities and people of 
Palos was treated much as Bergen treated 
that of Frederick. But a lofty enthusiasm 
sustained the great Italian explorer till, in 
spite of mutiny and manifold discouragements, 
he conducted his three caravels to Hispaniola. 

Details of the perilous voyage to Greenland 
need not be given. One of the three vessels, 
the whaler, parted company from the others, 
came near foundering in a squall, and was 



244 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

driven back to the coast of Norway. July 3, 
1721, the remainder of the party landed on 
the western coast, in latitude sixty-four, at 
Ball's River, the largest stream of Greenland. 
In the estuary of that river are numerous 
small islands, and on one of them, named for 
their ship, Hope Island, 1 they built a house 
of stone and earth, which they entered after 
a sermon on Psalm cxvii : " O praise the Lord, 
all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. For 
his merciful kindness is great toward us: and 
the truth of the Lord endureth forever. Praise 
ye the Lord." 

Egede's expectations regarding the people of 
the country, called Skroellings (" chips " or 
"parings"), were disappointed — a mistake no 
greater than that of Columbus, who sailed, as 
he supposed, for Cepango (Japan), and who died 
in the belief that he had discovered the East 
Indies. 2 Ruins of ancient Norwegian villages 
and even churches were found by Egede. But 
the Greenlanders then on the ground were 
neither Northmen nor descendants of North- 
men; they were Eskimos. Finding their social 
and moral condition extremely low, and their 
language wholly different from any other with 



1 Called by the natives Kangek. 

2 In 1614 Baffin sailed under instructions to press to the 
north, then to steer westerly, by which course it was hoped 
he might "bear down upon Japan." 



HANS EGEDE. 245 

which he had acquaintance, our missionary was 
met, but not daunted, by obstacles the most 
disheartening. A man of genuine faith and 
Christian heroism, his spirit rose to the oc- 
casion. He had come to Greenland as a 
missionary, and here was a people evidently 
heathen. The vernacular must 
be mastered. Learning at length 
the significance of one word, Ki7ia, "What is 
this?" he used it with all diligence and so 
obtained a vocabulary. A member of his party 
was detailed to live for a time amongst the 
natives in order to catch their speech. Paul, 
the eldest son of Egede, made good progress, 
and rendered service by his pencil in rudely 
sketching Bible scenes which his father en- 
deavored by words to set before the mind of 
natives. Acquisition, however, was necessarily 
slow, and slower yet all instruction of the 
Eskimos. Youths who for a little while were 
willing to learn at the rate of a fishhook for a 
letter soon grew weary, saying they could see 
no use in looking all day at a piece of paper 
and crying, A, B, C ; that the missionary and 
the factor were worthless people, doing noth- 
ing but scrawl in a book with a feather; that 
the Greenlanders were brave ; they could hunt 
and kill birds. Indeed, their own name for 
themselves is Innuit, "the men." As with 
all rude people their conceit was unbounded. 



246 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

Highest commendation of a European they 
would express by saying, " He is almost as 
well behaved as we are ; he is beginning to 
be a man." 

Egede, being secular head of the colony as 
well as its minister and a missionary to the 
heathen, felt obliged to make explorations in 
order to find some source of remunerative 
pecuniary returns. He had to combat de- 
pression among the colonists, whose privations 
were great and whose profits next 

ourage- ^ nothing. For provisions thev 
ments. ° r J 

were compelled to depend upon 
the mother country. These being inconstant 
and insufficient they were sometimes on the 
verge of starvation. True the king granted 
a lottery for their benefit, but it proved a 
failure. He levied a tax on the kingdom of 
Denmark and Norway, called the "Greenland 
Assessment," yet remittances were irregular 
and insufficient. 

Was it strange that under the influence of 
such a climate and under discouragements such 
as perhaps no other missionary ever encoun- 
tered Egede should begin to waver in his 
purpose of remaining, especially as others had 
resolved to quit the intolerable region? But 
Gertrude, his wife (noble woman!), would not 
listen to the thought. She would render no 
assistance in packing up, and his courage ral- 



HANS EGEDE. 247 

lied. During their multiplied perplexities she 
maintained cheerfulness, under all burdens 
keeping up her fortitude and faith. " Our 
Lord called us away," she said, "from our 
country and our father's house to come hither, 
and he will never fail us." She was indefat- 
igable in her kindness to the natives, espe- 
cially in times of sickness. She belongs to a 
group of early missionaries' companions — Har- 
riet Newell, Ann Haseltine Judson, and others 
— who have reflected so much honor upon 
their sex and upon the cause of Christian 
philanthropy. With a true womanly fortitude 
she endures the repulsiveness of her surround- 
ings, the intensity of northern frosts, and the 
intrusion of wild beasts. Once a huge and 
hungry polar bear breaks into the house, but 
into his eyes and open mouth she clashes a 
kettle of boiling gruel, and bruin retreats. 

The merchants of Bergen who had taken 
stock in this colonizing enterprise became dis- 
heartened and the company disbanded (1727). 
Three years later King Frederick died, and 
his successor, seeing no likelihood of reim- 
bursement from the Greenland trade for sums 
already expended, issued an order (1731) that 
all the colonists should return home. It was 
made optional with Egede to leave with the 
rest or to stay with such, if any, who of 
their own accord would remain. Provisions 



248 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

were allowed for one year, but it was an- 
nounced expressly that he could expect no 
further assistance. Now after ten years of 
such hardship, vexations, and want of success, 
religious as well as temporal, could any man 
be expected to tarry, especially in view of 
such a royal mandate? There was good rea- 
son to believe that he would be abandoned 
by the government and little reason to sup- 
pose that private funds would afford relief. 
Our missionary and his wife resolved to stay. 
A handful of other colonists stayed with them. 
His two colleagues went back to 
Denmark. The next year King 
Christian "VI sent necessary supplies, and the 
few colonists that remained met with more 
secular success than in any previous year. 
Later came word that the Greenland trade 
was to be opened anew and the mission to 
be sustained, for which purpose his majesty 
had ordered a gift of four hundred pounds 
sterling. Persistent loyalty to the King of 
kings triumphed. One party of northern ex- 
plorers in the preceding century named a high 
promontory which they discovered "Cape Hold- 
with-Hope." Egede, whose very name suggests 
firmness, 1 would seem to have kept that bold 
headland always in his eye, " Hold-with-Hope." 
Health meanwhile was much impaired. Such 



1 Egede — Eeg, the Danish for " oak. 



HANS EGEDE. 249 

incessant labor, solicitude, privation, and se- 
verity of climate would tell upon any foreign 
constitution, however robust. For a time even 
his mind appears to have sympathized in a 
measure with its racked tenement, and the 
only wonder is that there was not an entire 
collapse of both body and mind. With the 
exception of chest difficulties Greenland is 
subject to few diseases. No epidemic or con- 
tagious malady had been known among the 
natives until one of six youths who were sent 
to Copenhagen on returning brought the small- 
pox, which was communicated to his country- 
men. It raged for a twelvemonth, making 
fearful havoc. Certain places were depopu- 
lated, some of the people in their panic com- 
mitting suicide. When trading agents after- 
wards went over the country they found every 
house empty for leagues along the coast, and 
it was computed that from two to three thou- 
sand died of the distemper. Egede at that 
time, as always, showed himself a true friend 
to the Eskimos. He shrank from no offensive 
and wearisome offices of kindness in their be- 
half. This epidemic occurred about the time 
that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was en- 
deavoring to introduce vaccination into Lon- 
don. Egede's magnanimous wife at length 
succumbs, the victim of overwork and philan- 
thropic exposures during the epidemic. She 



250 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

died at the close of 1735. Like the eider fowl 
of Greenland, which plucks the finest down 
from her own breast to furnish a warm bed 
for her young, so was Gertrude Egede a self- 
sacrificing mother to the natives. 

The dauntless devotion of Egede to the 
work he had undertaken did not fail to win 
a degree of favor to the cause in Norway 
and Denmark. 1 But what were the spiritual 
results of the mission in those days of incip- 
iency ? Alas ! that an answer no more cheer- 
ing can be given. A large harvest from such 
soil could not be expected. Egede's motives 
were undoubtedly pure and his aim most 
praiseworthy, but by necessity his position 
was embarrassing. As we have 
seen, apparently the only way for 
him to reach Greenland and have the prospect 
of subsistence there was to organize a colony, 
and the basis of that undertaking on the part 
of stockholders and colonists was a commercial 
venture. Its originator had to be its leader. 
Under the contract, formal or implied, he 
was morally bound to look after the secular 
interests of those who had assumed pecuniary 
responsibilities. It was, then, a formidable 
embarrassment that Egede should from the 
first feel obliged to be all the while looking 
out for places and sources of more profitable 



Note 52. 



HANS EGEDB. 251 

trade and should experience constant chagrin 
at the inadequate financial returns. What in 
the way of religious achievements can be 
expected of a missionary whose thoughts are 
occupied largely with sealskins, whalebone, and 
blubber ? 

Without adverting again to the almost in- 
surmountable impediments of climate, to im- 
pediments in the language and habits of the 
people, which are likely to be met with in any 
barbarous region, we must notice that Egede 
was not fully possessed with the true idea of 
evangelization. He entertained the mistaken 
theory that civilization must precede Chris- 
tianity. With such a theory no one will 
have large success in "turning men from 
darkness to light and from the 
power of Satan unto God." Nor ^!*^ n 
with such a theory should any 
large success be looked for even in the line 
of mere civilization. The quickest, surest 
method for starting a savage on the high 
road of mental improvement and improve- 
ment in social relations is to secure the lodg- 
ment in his soul of some worthy energizing 
thought. And what impulse can be so mighty 
as the sense of personal responsibility to the 
holy God, the sense of sin with its penal 
consequences, and acquaintance with the good 
news of free grace through the atoning Lamb? 



252 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

There is no need of preparing a way for the 
gospel; it makes a way for itself and for 
everything else that is good. Preliminaries 
not having immediate and direct reference to 
the salvation of the sonl are no more required 
than are introductory arrangements before re- 
pentance and faith can become obligatory and 
can be suitably pressed upon the conscience. 
Breaking down superstition does not neces- 
sarily introduce vital religion. Of all health- 
ful forces for moving man in the career of 
ennobling civilization, what can compare with 
saving faith? The truest philanthropist is the 
one who determines first of all not to know 
anything among men save Jesus Christ and him 
crucified, and who accounts himself "debtor 
both to the Greeks and to the barbarians." 
The very alpha of the missionary's office, in 
the tropics or at the poles, is to deliver the 
message of Him who has sent him, "Look 
unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of 
the earth." 

Egede had only slight success, if any, in 
saving souls. His heart was right, but his 
theory defective. The natives mimicked and 
derided — than which is there anything harder 
to bear? In his wearisome and unfruitful toil 
it would have been very singular if he did not 
sometimes adopt the psalmist's ejaculation, " O 
Lord, how long?" Would it have been any- 



HANS EGEDE. 253 

thing strange if, like John Baptist in the castle 
of Machserus on the dreary eastern shore of 
the Dead Sea, Egede in his icy prison during 
the long night of winter should sometimes 
grow moody? Fifteen years of unremitting 
and unrequited labor were now passed. He 
preaches his farewell sermon. His text is 
(Isaiah xlix : 4), " Then I said, 
I have labored in vain, I have „ f e 

7 Returns. 

spent my strength for nought, 

and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with 
the Lord, and my work with my God." In 
shattered health, taking the cherished remains 
of his wife, he returns to Copenhagen. The 
king gives him an audience, makes him super- 
intendent (1740) of a training seminary for 
the mission, and confers on him the title of 
Bishop of Greenland, as upon his son after 
him. He wrote a narrative of his enterprise, 1 
and died (1758) at the age of seventy-two. 
His name is perpetuated on the Greenland 
coast in the name of a settlement, Egedeminde, 
"Egede's Memorial." 

"A failure!" ejaculate the unsympathizing. 
"What good came of it?" they ask supercil- 
iously. That all expectations, Christian and 
secular, were not realized has been fully ad- 

1 Relation angaende den Gronlandske Afissions Begyndelse ag 
forsatelse. Copenhagen, 1788. Also, Den gamle Gronland. Co- 
penhagen, 1741-44. 



254 PKOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

mitted; but in point of fact this noble Nor- 
wegian headed and planted what has proved 
to be a permanent colony, and that too 
under circumstances more disheartening than 
have been met by any similar enterprise in 
the whole range of colonial history. Greed 
was never his motive, nor did he incur any 
reasonable censure for mismanagement. With 
respect even to commercial interests it did 
not become worldly Danes to speak dispar- 
agingly of this private enterprise, conducted 
as it was with prudence, energy, and more of 
success than we should expect considering the 
obstacles encountered. How was 

Heroism. .. .., ., 

it with a similar government un- 
dertaking of that period? One Danish com- 
mander lighting upon a bank of Greenland 
sand that resembled gold fancied that his 
fortune was made. Filling his ship with the 
supposed treasure he sailed for Denmark, revel- 
ing on his voyage in dreams of opulence. In 
1728 four or five Danish ships were sent out 
— one a man-of-war — with masons, carpenters, 
and other handicraftsmen, taking artillery and 
materials for a fort and a new colony. The 
officers took horses with them to ride across 
the country and over the mountains with a 
view to discovering the supposed lost colony 
of the eastern coast. Those useless animals 
soon died. The soldiers mutinied. Neither 



HANS EGEDE. 255 

the governor nor the missionary was safe, for 
houses of correction had been emptied to fur- 
nish the colonists. Egede, who before could 
sleep in the hovels of savage Greenlanders, 
now needs a guard to defend his bed against 
the attacks of Christian fellow countrymen. 

How much of disaster has attended nearly 
all secular enterprises at the north ! x Time 
was when the Arctic archipelago might be 
seen studded with abandoned ships, six of 
them left in the ice — the Investigator at 
Mercy Bay, the Resolute and Intrepid at Mel- 
ville Island, the Assistance and Pioneer in 
Wellington Channel, and the Advance in 
Smith's Sound, besides the Erebus and Terror, 
which were believed to have been 
left before in the Strait of James _. 

Disasters. 

Ross. In Melville Bay more than 
two hundred ships have already perished. 
Superior character and superior skill have 
not sufficed. Sir John Franklin was a man 
of piety, so were Parry and Scoresby, and 
though more than one ship's company have 
perished of cold and starvation we do not 
pronounce all those expeditions unauthorized. 2 
While one chief object in view has been but 



1 Although a thousand years have passed since Eric the Ked 
discovered Greenland the interior remained less known than was 
the interior of Africa till within a few years. 

2 Sargent's Arctic A dventures, p. 472. 



256 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

partially accomplished there are few problems 
relating to the physics of our globe — atmos- 
pheric pressure, electricity, currents, the aurora, 
the figure of the earth — which can be under- 
stood otherwise than by an observation of polar 
phenomena. Important benefits have accrued 
to science and indirectly to commerce. 

Hans Egede's mission was not a failure. 
Weight and worth of character are measured 
by something else than success. The awards 
of heaven are not graduated by results, but 
according to fidelity. " Except," says Dr. 
Geikie, "except that the ancestors of Egede 
perished on the east coast of that most dismal 
country, and that its unsurveyed leagues of ice 
and snow were figuratively under the Danish 
flag, we know of no claim which Greenland 
ever had upon Danish Christians." 1 Not so 
had this pious man learned Christ, nor did 
he thus interpret Providence. He had been 
called of God to that undertaking. By heed- 
ing the divine summons he accomplished more 
for Scandinavia, more for mankind, by far 
than he could have done among the rocks 
of Vaagen. He was a debtor to those north- 
ern barbarians, and obeying the divine impulse 
he became a historical character. His noble 
example is felt in the world today and will 



1 Christian Missions. London. 1861. P. 



HANS EGEDE. 257 

be felt to the end of time. We marvel at the 
obtuseness that fails to see in the career of 
this humble missionary an example of moral 
sublimity. When King Frederick had just 
been searching for Danish subjects qualified 
to enter upon mission work in India with its 
attractions, and had to solicit recruits from a 
foreign nationality, a young pastor on the rock- 
bound coast of Norway and almost within hear- 
ing of the Maelstrom was meditating on the 
forlorn condition of men in a region yet more 
rugged. The King of kings was 
giving him a call. He could not ,? e ™ ine 

6 & Nobility. 

clearly interpret the summons at 
first. Circumstances seemed to chain him to 
the rocks of Vaagen. At length, as to the 
strong man at Lehi, " the Spirit of the Lord 
came mightily upon him ; " without wavering 
he toils on year after year amidst suspicion 
and obloquy for the privilege of expatriating 
himself and of reaching an icy home that he 
may benefit a wretched population. Once there 
he endures a fifteen years' martyrdom of priva- 
tion, perils, reproaches, and disappointments. 
He has the genius of Christian patience. 1 Ir- 
resolution never masters him. The sternest 
realities man can ever meet he looks in the 
face unterrified. To faith in Christ there are 
no obstacles that cannot be overcome; to the 



Le genie e'est la patience. — Buffon. 



258 PKOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

man who takes counsel of duty rather than 
of difficulty there are no impossibilities. 

Hans Egede pioneered the way for other 
missionaries, Danish and Moravian. By his 
endurance and perseverance he showed the 
capabilities of Christian fortitude. His life 
at the north changed the temperature of that 
continent of frost for all time to come. His 
example is no coruscation of the borealis, but 
a steady beacon light to guide and animate 
every wavering Christian laborer in lands less 
inhospitable. Estimated on the scale of mo- 
tives and qualities this apostle 
Usefulness. , , , . . . 

was a hero and his mission a 

triumph. You are familiar with the incident 
of two northern travelers lighting upon a man 
at the point of freezing. One of them sprang 
to his relief, raised him, half buried in the 
snow, chafed him, restored warmth, and by 
the rescue of a benumbed wanderer brought 
himself into a thorough glow. His inactive 
companion, wrapped in furs, came near perish- 
ing from cold. So is it with communities, and 
Norway has today a life she would not possess 
but for that philanthropic service in Greenland. 
Did she ever produce a man more useful to 
herself than Hans Egede? 

The mission as well as the colony established 
by him became permanent. After a century 
and a half it exists today. When in the latter 



HANS EGEDE. 259 

part of the last century and beginning of the 
present the Danish church at home had be- 
come torpid through rationalism this mission, 
as might be expected, declined. Since then 
there has been to some extent a favorable 
change; yet the preachers sent out from Den- 
mark are in the main candidates, not of the 
first grade, who go for only a limited time, 
five to eight years, who do not usually acquire 
the language, and who — as has sometimes been 
true elsewhere — make this service a stepping- 
stone to some more attractive benefice at 
home. It is to be acknowledged that the 
power of evangelical Christianity is not strik- 
ingly marked in the character and habits of 
the native people, yet decided improvement 
has taken place; the community has become 
nominally Christian. In Danish Greenland 
proper the last acknowledged pagan Eskimo 
died some years since. Most of the people 
are able to read and write, and here is one 
of the instances of a rude people increasing 
instead of diminishing by contact with civili- 
zation and superior foreigners. 1 The Danish 
Government — to its special honor be it said — 
has pursued a paternal policy, for one thing 
wisely excluding ardent spirits, that destructive 
bane among so many rude races. 

1 In 1789 the population was only 5,122 ; in 1872 it had become 
9,441. 



260 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

There is in Greenland singularly one warm 
spring, with a uniform temperature of a hun- 
dred and four degrees Fahrenheit; and while 
most of the birds are birds of prey there is 
one bird of song, the linnet. Such are the 
fountain and melody of our holy religion in 
that land of appalling dreariness. 



MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 261 



MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 



LECTURE XI. — EARLY MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 

In a suburb of Constance, near where the 
Rhine leaves the lake, stands one of the more 
appropriate monuments in Europe. It is a 
rude, massive bowlder placed on the spot 
where more than four and a half centuries 
ago John Huss and Jerome of Prague were 
burned at the stake. Few incidents of foreign 
travel ever impressed me more than to find 
on the morning of an anniversary of the 
martyrdom of Huss that a Prot- 
estant gentleman from Prague, in J 
Bohemia, had climbed before daybreak over 
the high iron fence which incloses the monu- 
ment and with a wreath of fresh immortelles 
had crowned the memorial rock. John Huss, 
the true-hearted, with noble simplicity and con- 
scientious firmness, never made giddy by ap- 
plause nor despondent by persecution, a re- 
former before the Reformation and a Bohemian 
Brother before the Unitas Fratrum, furnished 
an impulse and type of that movement which 



262 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

issued in the colony at Herrnhut. Between his 
martyrdom, in July, 1415, and the present hour 
there lie two noteworthy eras in the history of 
the United Brethren — the one a testimony of 
endurance under cruel oppression, the other 
achievements of signal evangelism. These two 
eras are by no means disconnected. By the 
evident design of Providence they form a 
coherent whole. The roots of the present 
always lie hid in the past. 

One of two results usually flows from severe 
trial; individuals and communities either en- 
feeble their spiritual life by pitying themselves 
and nursing an expectation of pity from others, 
or else active benevolence is stimulated. Suf- 
fering that fails to make a man or a church 
more enterprising in the way of Christian phi- 
lanthropy, that fails to ennoble and expand 
character, fails of its chief end. 
is ip in . j£ self-indulgent inactivity results 
decay will ensue. Seldom is any one called to 
notable service in behalf of fellow men without 
some severity of previous discipline. In the 
pit and in prison Joseph qualifies to become 
the best governor Egypt ever had. The op- 
pression of Pilgrims and Puritans in England, 
their early hardships on the rugged shores of 
New England, and their subsequent experiences 
in war contributed to that character which has 
revealed itself in missionary movements now 



MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 263 

constituting the truest glory of our land. 
Embarrassments under which John Eliot and 
others like him labored in the mother country 
and the condition of self-exile to a wilderness 
made them all the more ready for Christian 
effort in behalf of the Indian. Often does the 
baptism of fire and blood seal a consecration 
to high and far-reaching aims. On the anvil 
and under the hammer character grows broad. 
The Hebrew lad sold to Ishmaelites is not the 
only instance of a slave effecting vast benefit 
to others. Was it not in the divine thought 
that both king and queen of the Iberians 
should be converted when a Christian female 
in the fourth century was carried away captive 
into Asiatic Georgia? Was it not in order to 
the planting of Christianity in Abyssinia that 
God allowed the capture by fierce natives of 
two Christian youths, one of whom became 
the first bishop in that country? During all 
the Moravian experience of oppression and 
bloodshed He who seeth the end from the 
beginning had evidently in mind salvation for 
the Eskimos in arctic regions, for African 
slaves in tropical West Indies, and for Hot- 
tentots in Africa. 

Having prepared a volume of lectures on 
Moravian missions I shall not, of course, in a 
single lecture attempt much of detail, but only 
present a few general considerations and facts. 



264 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

The merit of a revived, collective apprehension 
of Christ's great aim in his kingdom on earth 
belongs to the Renewed Church of the United 
Brethren. What Wittenberg was to Rome 
Herrnhut became to Protestant Christendom. 
In modern times the Moravian Church was 
the first as a church and at the 

oravian on tset of her career to render 
Antecedence. m 

practical m her life a just con- 
ception of what Christianity has to do for our 
world. Individual and sporadic efforts, gov- 
ernmental and colonial movements, in the line 
of foreign evangelism had, as we have seen, 
taken place, yet few of them proceeded upon 
the basis of a distinctly recognized duty to 
give the gospel to the heathen as heathen and 
because such is the command of Him who died 
for all. 

Reverting once more to the low countries we 
gladly accord to that commercial corporation, 
the Dutch East India Company, a laudable 
interest in supporting ministers of the gospel 
in the Asiatic possessions of Holland — For- 
mosa, Amboyna, Java, and Ceylon — and that, 
too, before similar movements in Great Britain. 
The main impulse, however, proceeded, as we 
saw, from the circumstance that Hollanders — 
government servants and merchants — were set- 
tled in those islands, and that by conquest in 
the first half of the seventeenth century native 



MOEAVIAN MISSIONS. 265 

peoples had come under Dutch rule. The 
method of evangelization was to a consider- 
able extent unsatisfactory. Not a little coer- 
cion was used. Christianity, instead of being 
introduced into the heart or sometimes even 
into the head, was imposed upon the people. 
It need hardly be said that the Reformed 
Church of the Netherlands was very far from 
being thoroughly leavened with a missionary 
spirit. 

In England, also, societies like that for the 
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 
whose charter bears the date of 1701, sprang 
primarily from a desire to supply British col- 
onies with clergymen, catechists, and school- 
masters. Labor in behalf of heathen in and 
near the colonies was a subordinate, an in- 
cidental, consideration. Only a few in the 
Church of England and among Dissenters had 
dreamed of what was due from them to the out- 
side pagan world. The Congregational churches 
of New England in the last half of the seven- 
teenth century came nearer than any others of 
that period to some just appreciation of the 
great duty owed by Christian men to those 
who sit in the region and shadow of death. 
Their sense of obligation, as has been shown, 
began to find expression during the decade 
from 1640-1650 in labors commenced by John 
Eliot and the Mayhews — labors into which 



266 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

others also entered then and later. But the 
men who led in that example remained pastors 
of churches composed of English colonists, so 
were others who followed their example. Ex- 
clusive devotion by any Protestant to Christian 
work among the Indians in that century was 
scarcely known. 

The little kingdom of Denmark having ac- 
quired possessions on the Coromandel Coast 
of India, a colonial interest, as you recollect, 
occasioned the mission to Tranquebar. The 
originating motive of Hans Egede's expedition 
to Greenland was the hope of finding and 
ministering to supposed descendants of Chris- 
tian Scandinavians who centuries before had 
settled in that region of ice. Those associated 
with him in the enterprise, except his noble 
wife Gertrude, were at the outset chiefly in- 
fluenced by the prospect of a remunerative 
trade. But those early Danish missions had 
only a feeble hold upon the Lutheran Church 
of Denmark and Norway. 

A foreign mission as we now understand 
that term — a movement, simple and pure, of 
Christian men entertaining the primary purpose 
of carrying the gospel to the heathen because 
they are heathen — was scarcely known in the 
Protestant world till 1732. Just eleven years 
after Egede the Norwegian sailed from Bergen 
and just eleven years before David Brainerd 



MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 267 

betook himself to Kaunaumeek such an under- 
taking originated at Herrnhut. 

As for the refugees from ancient Egypt there 
was needed a counselor and lawgiver of emi- 
nent piety, breadth of culture, endowed with 
the qualities of a statesman and prophet, one 
educated elsewhere than in a servile condition, 
so the refugees in Upper Lusatia needed a 
leader with far different training from what 
could be had among persecuted artisans of 
Bohemia. Such a leader was in preparation. 
Of noble birth, by marriage connections re- 
lated to several royal families on the Conti- 
nent, with superior endowments, from boyhood 
onward moved to a consecration of talents 
and treasures to the promotion of 

,. , . , , , , , Zinzendorf. 

evangelical interests at home and 
abroad, Count Zinzendorf rises to our view as 
one of the more remarkable characters of the 
last century. What other name is known to 
ecclesiastical annals of a man in such high 
social position who at an early period of life 
became possessed with a grand Christian idea 
so foreign to men of his rank and so in ad- 
vance of his age, who in the sanctified ardor 
of youth entered into covenant to do all possi- 
ble for the cause of evangelization, and that, 
too, among those most neglected by others — 
a covenant from which he had not swerved 
when at threescore (1760) death closed his 



268 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

earthly activities? Gross Hennersdorf, German 
universities, and the Saxon court furnished 
Herrnhut with a Moses. 

But what of the period? In Germany it 
was to a sad extent a period of scholasticism 
in both the Lutheran and Reformed Churches; 
a period of bitter theological contests; a period 
of sheer orthodoxy, evangelical feeling and life 
having largely evaporated. The spurious illu- 
minism of later years is just becoming visible 
in its murky dawn; the philosophy which 
brought on rationalism is making its early 
essays to dominate revelation. In 
poc ' the person of Frederick William I 
there sits on the throne of Prussia the strangest 
compound of religiosity and violent passion that 
ever wore a crown, and there will soon be a 
reaction in favor of French tinsel and French 
infidelity. 

Pietism distressed by the petrifying condi- 
tion of the religious world had for many years 
been striving, and with a measure of success, 
to throw off the stiff bands of confessionalism 
and revive a Biblical piety. It insisted upon 
a new heart, a new creature in Christ Jesus, 
as the primary need of every man, savage or 
cultured, and then of a warm Christian fellow- 
ship. But in its reaction from torpor pietism 
had in turn somewhat deteriorated; it was 
becoming narrow, concentrated within itself, 



MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. 269 

and censorious. Some good men of the Halle 
school thought Zinzendorf could not be a child 
of God because he had not been through the 
penitential struggle after their pattern. The 
excellent men who gave in their adhesion to 
that form of revived religion kept themselves 
unduly apart from the rest of society; they 
lacked breadth; their theology was too much 
a theology of feeling and frames. There was 
needed a forth-putting spirit, a spirit of enter- 
prise in behalf of others, an element which 
happily did enter into the life of Moravianism. 
Herrnhut became indeed a tropical island in a 
polar ocean, but her fruit trees were destined 
to be transplanted. The two leading ideas of 
church existence — personal culture and aggres- 
sion, growth intensively and extensively, each 
an auxiliary to the other — harmonized in the 
spiritual temperament of the United Brethren. 

This will appear all the more noticeable 
when it is considered what the regimen was 
which Zinzendorf introduced — an isolated com- 
munity, whose municipal, industrial, and social 
affairs were administered by church authorities, 
no outsider to hold real estate or to have resi- 
dence within corporate limits. Such a system, 
continuing still in Great Britain and on the 
continent of Europe, though relinquished in 
this country, was not of itself as a polity 
suited to enlargement or perpetuity. Were 



270 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

it not for the evangelistic movement outward 
to the farthest lines, local and social, of our 
race Herrnhut might before this have become 
an entity of the past. The well-defined resto- 
ration of a primitive missionary element sup- 
plied the required conserving and vital force. 

The main question evermore confronts us, 
What is a man, what is a communion, worth 
for the kingdom of God, that progressive king- 
dom which is to fill the earth? Every people 
as well as every individual has by divine ap- 
pointment an office to perform, a niche to fill. 
The function of Moravianism has been to em- 
body and illustrate before the eyes of Protes- 
tants the harmony of Christian life at home 
centers and evangelistic energy abroad. 

In every great undertaking or discovery 
chief merit pertains to priority. To Herrnhut 
belongs the credit of having as a church taken 
the lead, beginning her missions in 1732, and 
having persisted therein amidst the religious 
apathy and growing rationalism of the last 
century and the early part of our present cen- 
tury. The year 1732 was the year in which 
Voltaire published his Lettres Philosophiques, 
and the grinning infidel had only too much 
occasion to chuckle over the fact that Vernet, 
a Protestant minister at Geneva, was insisting, 
not upon the necessity, but the utility, of 
our holy religion! It will be remembered, too, 



MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 271 

that besides Moravianism there was another 
remarkable manifestation of the spiritual re- 
vival, which began with Spener's Collegia 
Pietatis two hundred years ago. It was Wes- 
leyanism. The pietistic wave struck Great 
Britain, and its marvelous result is second 
only to the Reformation of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. That, however, in its organization and 
its foreign missionary movement was later by 
a generation than Herrnhut and was in some 
measure an outgrowth of Herrnhut. 

The question arises, What was the distinc- 
tive element out of which sprang the move- 
ment that marks 1732 a red-letter year in 
missionary annals? That element was an un- 
usually fervent love to our Saviour. I will 
not pause to speak of infelicities in the poetic 
imagery of an early Moravian era, particu- 
larly in the Sifting Period. Of 

, . . . , . . Motive Power. 

what account are mere sestnetic 

blemishes as against the substantial and more 
important features of vital piety? Why should 
they even be alluded to — as is often done, 
and sometimes discreditably — when the denom- 
ination has sloughed them off and repudiated 
them? I repeat, one marked characteristic of 
the Brethren's Church and the fountain of her 
remarkable missionary zeal is warmth of loyalty 
to Him who is Head of the Church. I am not 
aware that since primitive days any communion 



272 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

of believers have as a body in such marked 
manner and so uniformly kept the eye upon 
the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of 
the world. Thence has come the inspiration 
which makes a Moravian community in its best 
days so free from pomp, noise, and worldliness, 
from the greed of gain and honor; which sheds 
the charm of simplicity and cheerfulness over 
social life, over religious worship, over death 
and the resting place of the dead — a charm 
restful and refreshing, that abides even in the 
most repulsive regions of foreign missionary 
toil. Every evangelical church possesses in 
some measure, of course, a genuine affection 
for our Lord; but as Faraday has shown 
that a dormant magnetism exists in all metals, 
which will become apparent only at a certain 
temperature, so in some Christian bodies there 
is required a degree of rare religious fervor to 
make it apparent that charity abides there. It 
must be said that this virtue, with some alter- 
nations of vigor, has been eminently cultivated 
by the United Brethren, among whom there 
has never prevailed a Christless Christianity, 
nor Christ without the cross, nor the cross 
without the resurrection. Philosophy under- 
takes no foreign missions; she will never quit 
her groves of Academus. Little would it avail 
if she did. Mere philanthropy will not take 
men into unevangelized regions. No reliance 



MOEAVIAN MISSIONS. 273 

for reclaiming the race can be had save upon 
those who discover that on the cross justice 
and mercy harmonize, who become so pene- 
trated by the love of God in Christ Jesus 
that they "cannot but speak the things which 
they have seen and heard." The place where 
they shall witness, whether among kindred at 
home or heathen at the ends of the earth, is 
a matter of comparative indifference so the 
Master makes his pleasure plain. The excel- 
lent Charles Simeon, of Cambridge, kept a 
portrait of Henry Martyn in his study, which 
seemed to be all the while saying, "Be ear- 
nest, be earnest ; don't trifle, don't trifle ; " 
and Simeon would say, "Yes, I will be ear- 
nest, I will be earnest; I will not trifle, for 
souls are perishing and Jesus must be glori- 
fied." Missionaries of the United Brethren 
have for the most part kept the eye on a 
countenance more commanding, more lovely, 
"looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher 
of our faith." 

Such being the case, what might be expected 
of Moravian missionaries with regard to their 
fields of remote and arduous labor? Just what 
we find — that they go forth not so much in 
the service of the Unitas Fratrum as from 
personal obedience to the Lord Jesus, because 
his express command brings to them an un- 
transferable duty and because the pledge of 



274 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

his perpetual presence they know will be re- 
deemed; just what we find — that in their 
peculiarly trying experience they are kept 
hopeful and cheerful by the lively conscious- 
ness of that union, which is so intimate that 
if a member be wounded here on earth the 
Head in heaven feels it. By experience as 
well as by the Word of God are they taught 
that spiritual life does not spring up out of 
native depths in man's soul, but comes down 
from Christ into individual hearts; that saving 
knowledge is not revealed by flesh and blood, 

but is something divinely imparted 
ns ian w hich. finds its way to the center 

of one's being and there masters 
the man; and how can they do otherwise than 
lift up the cross to the gaze of sin-smitten 
man? Thanks that Zinzendorf inculcated the 
"theology of blood," his own expression; thanks 
that Francke, his teacher, taught "a drop of 
faith is more noble than a whole sea of sci- 
ence, though it be the historical science of the 
divine Word." There are only two systems 
of salvation — every man his own saviour or 
no man saved by himself alone. What other 
ground of peace and hope for the guilty is 
there besides Calvary, that focus of the uni- 
verse? The expiatory and propitiatory cross 
is the appointed place for friendly meeting be- 
tween God and man, heaven and earth. Only 



MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 275 

from the cross waves the white flag of truce. 
Deeply penetrated with a conviction of this 
truth missionaries of the United Brethren have 
started out, never questioning the universal 
need or the universal adaptation of the gospel. 
They have held with peculiar distinctness that 
the Greek is no better fitted to receive the 
gospel and to enter heaven by his speculation, 
and that the barbarian is no less fitted by his 
rudeness; that there is no aristocratic salva- 
tion; that Christianity is no more designed 
for Philemon, the wealthy master, than for 
Onesimus, the bond servant; that it is suited 
to man as man, whatever his language, color, 
kindred, or country — suited to every existing, 
every conceivable, type and grade of civiliza- 
tion and of degradation; hence, believing as- 
suredly that for spiritual vision the Sun of 
Righteousness is equally indispensable and 
equally adapted to every eye, whether that 
organ be blue or black or whatever its shade. 
" God hangs great weights on small wires," 
says an Oriental proverb. The truth thus 
homely expressed has been illustrated in Mo- 
ravian missions. It has been maintained by 
the supreme Ruler from the first. Objects, 
places, and instruments for the accomplish- 
ment of purposes more intimately relating to 
his spiritual kingdom have usually been chosen 
with apparent reference to staining the pride 



276 PEOTESTANT MISSIONS. 

of human glory. Is the angel Jehovah to 
appear signally to Moses? It will not be in 
the tall cedar or terebinth, but in a burning 
bush. By the vision of a barley loaf prostrat- 
ing a tent among the host of Midian is fore- 
shadowed what the little band under Gideon 
will accomplish. Would we behold the eternal 
Word made flesh and come to dwell among 
us? Shepherds will be our guides and we 
look into a stable. The first to announce his 
ceremonial presence at the temple will be an 
aged widow; the first to herald his resurrec- 
tion, a humble woman. This law, of which 
we are so often reminded in 
the history of the Church, is 
one which our countrymen have special need 
to ponder. We are addicted to an idolatry of 
bulk. We boast of great lakes, great rivers, 
great spaces, as if these things would make 
a nation great, whereas the aggregate of little 
things is usually greater than the aggregate of 
great ones. It would require a larger chasm 
to hold all the coral insects of our world 
than all the elephants, and what those animal- 
cules accomplish is of more importance in the 
economy of nature than the huge quadrupeds 
of Asia and Africa together. Pride of bigness 
fails to consider that dwelling among superior 
magnitudes only makes conceit and vanity the 
more glaring. Is it not time for us to give 



MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 277 

thought rather to the busy bee than to the 
spread eagle? Go to the ant — architect, sol- 
dier, political economist; consider her ways 
and be wise. Was it the vast territory of 
Scythia or little Attica that furnished states- 
men, philosophers, poets, and historians who 
have been models to the rest of the world ? 
Was it in populous Peking or in Bethlehem 
Ephratah, little among the thousands of Ju- 
dah, where the Lord of glory appeared in 
human form? It is great and good ideas 
associated with energy that make a man or 
a people truly great. That alone which re- 
veals the divine, that which is knit to a 
noble future, knit to eternity, ranks really 
high. Humble instrumentalities and grand ulti- 
mate consequences disclose the strength and 
skill of the mighty One of Israel. Was the 
size of Moses' rod wherewith he brought water 
from the rock of any account? The human 
following and force of our Lord at first were 
only a few fishermen, a few women, and a few 
children. 

Let us travel back one hundred and sixty- 
two years to the Hutberg at Herrnhut in 
Lusatia. Casting an eye at the neighboring 
hamlet we see no imposing architecture, nor 
in society or worship any imposing forms. 
The place has had existence for only ten 
years. A majority of the inhabitants are 



278 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

exiles, poor and not highly educated, with 

two or three exceptions not high born, planted 

and permitted on this spot rather by sufferance 

than with the good will of any government. 

Among them is a young man from Suabia, 

twenty-seven years of age, a potter by trade. 

One night in July, 1731, he is sleepless. 

What keeps him awake? There was once a 

young man at Athens who said the trophy of 

Miltiades would not let him sleep ; is any such 

ambition at work here? A thought from on 

high has been received, a holy ardor is kindled 

in his soul. No such little affair as that of 

Marathon fills his mind; per- 
Herrnhut, 1732. , -.. , , 

sonal aggrandizement has no 

place. Amidst night watches his heart turns 
toward benighted slaves in the West Indies, 
and his purpose is formed — he will carry the 
news of salvation to Africans in bondage. 
There has for some time been a prayer meet- 
ing at Herrnhut every evening, and he is 
always present. A remarkable season of re- 
freshing from on high four years ago stood 
evidently connected with his prayers and those 
of his immediate associates. He was at the 
meeting when Count Zinzendorf spoke of the 
condition of West India slaves, also when 
Anthony, the black man from St. Thomas, 
told the story of his dark-minded countrymen 
and of his sister, who had some desire to know 



MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 279 

the way of life. The thought of saving one 
soul prepares this young brother for any sacri- 
fice. The cross of Christ is the trophy that 
will not let Leonard Dober sleep that night. 
The next day he finds that his friend Tobias 
Leupold was similarly affected at the same 
time with himself by the same circumstances 
and has been moved to the same resolution. 

In missionary annals similar coincidences not 
unfrequently present themselves, and such a 
coincidence usually marks an epoch. The year 
1644 furnishes an example. John Eliot began 
his stud}^ of the Indian language and Thomas 
Mayhew, encouraged by the conversion of 
Hiacoomes, was preparing for Christian labors 
in the vernacular of Martha's Vineyard, but 

the undertakings of those two 
-, , ., . -, Coincidences, 

devout men were quite inde- 
pendent of each other. Seventeen hundred 
and ninety-five yields an illustration. Dr. 
Bogue was supplying the pulpit of the Tab- 
ernacle in Bristol, England; Dr. Ryland, of 
that city, received letters from the Baptist 
missionaries in Bengal and sends for Dr. 
Bogue, who belongs to a different denomina- 
tion, to hear them read. Then they kneel 
and pray together, and the thought occurs 
to Dr. Bogue that it was most desirable and 
might be practicable to unite Christians of dif- 
ferent denominations for missionary purposes. 



280 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

That was the germ of the London Missionary 
Society. 

We return to Herrnhut. Leupold writes a 
letter to the congregation communicating the 
desire of himself and Dober to become mis- 
sionaries. By the public reading of that let- 
ter two more young men, Matthew Stach 
and Frederick Bohnisch, are simultaneously 
impressed, resolve to offer themselves for serv- 
ice in Greenland, and next year will be on 
their way thither. The very atmosphere of 
Herrnhut is becoming quick with the evan- 
gelistic element. The delay of a twelvemonth 
only confirms the resolution of Dober. It has 
taken time, though far less time 
__. . irs . than is usual, to convince the 

Missionaries. 

Moravian Church that the scheme 

is neither a wild one nor premature. Martin 
Linner, the worthy chief elder of the congre- 
gation, an invalid, has set his heart on having 
Dober succeed him in office and cannot bear 
to have him leave. Generally the best men 
suited for foreign service are most needed at 
home. 

The day for departure is at hand. David 
Nitschmann, who after awhile will be ordained 
as the first bishop of the Renewed Church of 
the United Brethren, and chiefly with a view 
to furthering the cause of missions, has been 
selected to accompany Dober. Leave-taking, 



MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 281 

with prayer and singing, is over. No laudatory 
speeches are made, no torchlight processions 
take place. The morning of August 21, 1732, 
dawns; no, it has hardly dawned. At three 
o'clock they start northward, Count Zinzendorf 
taking them some miles on their way to Baut- 
zen. Thence they set out — a potter and a 
carpenter, with a small bundle in hand and 
less than four dollars each in the pocket — for 
a journey of six hundred miles on foot, and at 
the end of that journey they will still be four 
thousand miles from the place of destination. 

Chimerical ! preposterous ! exclaim the un- 
thinking. Pause a moment. Into the soul 
of that man whose trade is to work in clay 
there has come a spark from heaven. It has 
kindled a flame, clear, calm, steady. Since 
primitive times he is the first missionary to 
African slaves. He is the first Protestant 
missionary to the heathen of tropical America. 
At Herrnhut he has not been argued out of 
his convictions; at Copenhagen stories of can- 
nibalism will not frighten him out of his pur- 
pose, nor will he be wearied out of it by the 
refusal of every Danish shipmaster to take 
him to St. Thomas. On the long pedestrian 
journey from Lusatia to Denmark all profess- 
ing Christians, save one, laugh at the potter 
and carpenter or else pity them; and that 
one, the appreciative Countess von Stolberg, 



282 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

represents just about the proportion of persons 
then on the Continent who would be likely 
to estimate aright the motives and aims of 
these men. 

There are some who can declaim well on the 
subject of universal brotherhood; there always 
have been such. Even heathen poets could get 
off fine sentiment now and then, Seneca say- 
ing, 1 "I was not born for one corner; this 
whole world is my country;" Lucan professing 
to believe that he was born, 2 "not for himself 
solely, but for all mankind." Yet which of 
them ever lifted so much as a finger for phil- 
anthropic purposes? And of all the thousands 
in evangelical Europe on the twenty-first of 
August, 1732, how many were moving toward 
the heathen world in obedience to Christ's 
command? Just two men, who have bidden 
good-by to Herrnhut long before sunrise — men 
who have taken in the simple distinctive idea 
of evangelization and in whom that means 
something else than stay at home. They head 
a long line of quiet, unostentatious laborers of 
the Unitas Fratrum 3 who have knocked at 
frozen doors for permission to proclaim the 
love of Jesus; who have traversed regions 
where the sun shineth in his strength, folio w- 



1 Non sum uno angulo natus ; patria mea totus hie est mundus, 

2 Nee sibi, sed toti gentium se credere mundo. 

3 Note 53. 



MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 283 

ing in tracks most familiar to the tornado and 
to the pestilence that walketh in darkness; 1 
who in the face of the brand and the toma- 
hawk have gone with a song in the heart 
and on the lips. Not unfrequently have they 
had precedence on given foreign 
fields. 2 While David Brainerd was ... . 

ticism. 

still a freshman at Yale Moravian 
missionaries devoted themselves to a portion 
of the Delaware tribe. They reduced the lan- 
guage to writing and printed a number of 
works, religious and of an educational charac- 
ter. For a century and a half have they in 
various languages made cultivated plantations, 
primeval forests, and dreary wastes vocal with 
the hymn of Zinzendorf, 

"Jesus, thy blood and righteousness/' 

and Paul Gerhardt's, 

"0 Head, so full of bruises!" 

Chiefly it is to men on the outer verge of 
moral and social hopelessness that they have 
gone, yet not primarily to civilize them; not 
so much to make Moravians as to make Chris- 



1 Note 54. 

2 One instance is that of labor in behalf of the Cherokees, 
which was begun by Steiner and Byhan in 1801, eleven years 
before the American Board sent men to Bombay and sixteen 
years before the Board established a mission among that tribe. 



284 PKOTESTAOT MISSIONS. 

tians ; not mere reformation, but salvation, is 
their great aim. 

Civilization never saves, may fail altogether 
of preparing for Christianity. Christianity 
never fails to bring civilization in its train. 
The United Brethren have, indeed, every- 
where introduced schools and industrial arts, 
but the hiding of their missionary power is 
in the cross of Christ. Studiously and wisely 
have they abstained from intermeddling with 
political affairs; theirs is not the 
gospel of intrigue. Largely toiling 
for self-support they have yet seldom become 
secularized. Most courageously have they as 
a general thing kept to their work. Purloin- 
ing the fruit of other men's labors, welcoming 
the disciplined members, and employing the re- 
jected native helpers of neighboring missions 
are not chargeable upon them. What though 
physical science has not been their forte; what 
though no great invention or discovery, no epic 
poem or popular romance, has emanated from 
them; theirs is a work unspeakably higher on 
the scale of the Messianic kingdom — winning 
souls to Christ and fitting them for glory. 

With rare persistence have they clung to 
their purpose. Does a backslidden Indian 
leave the mission settlement and wander into 
the wilderness? A youthful Moravian follows 
him into the forest, finds him at length, tells 



MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 285 

him it is in vain he flees; were he to go hun- 
dreds of miles he would still pursue him. The 
Indian's heart melts. "Do the brethren re- 
member me still? Are you come merely to 
seek me?" and he weeps in bitter contrition. 
Thousands upon thousands of converts are the 
more than golden reward of such perseverance. 
Numberless are the witnesses like a dying 
Eskimo girl. "O Redeemer!" she exclaims, 
raising her wasted hands toward heaven, " O 
Redeemer! how is it that when I hear of 
thee I cannot refrain from tears? As the 
eider fowl to the rock, so cleaveth my soul 
to thee!" 

August 21, 1732! Not Yorktown or Water- 
loo ; not Aboukir or Trafalgar ; not the birth- 
day of king or empress, but the birthday 
of a movement having grandeur in that only 
kingdom which shall nourish forever. Once 
more I call attention to the fact that the 
influence of a country or a community upon 
the destinies of our race has little 
respect to its geographical extent. ugus 
It was a land whose greatest length was about 
the same as the distance from New York to 
Boston, and whose entire area did not exceed 
one half that of Missouri, which saved Europe 
from the desolating invasion of Persian hordes. 
Venice was never more influential than when 
her territory on the mainland was less than 



286 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

one square mile. Within seven years from 
August 21, 1732, Herrnhut sent out ten dif- 
ferent missions — than which is there any fact 
in the whole range of evangelistic history 
more noteworthy? 1 From that obscure radi- 
ating point in Central Europe missions have 
been established on each of the five other 
continents, yet to the present day Herrnhut 
is a settlement of only one thousand souls. 
If other Protestant churches, the older and 
the younger, had been equally prompt and 
in proportion to numbers equally devoted 
to this cause, instead of sleeping on obliv- 
ious to what is due to the unevangelized, 
equipped with so small an amount of infor- 
mation and so large a supply of objections, 
Zion would be seen to have arisen, her light 
being come and the glory of the Lord being 
risen upon her. Had that been done Jesuits 
would not be glorying in their priority of 
missionary zeal, nor would the heathen world 
be now flinging back reproaches upon Chris- 
tendom for her unpardonable tardiness; 2 the 
Karen would not have put to the missionary 



1 It is said that not long since a Moravian functionary called 
at the office of the East Africa Company in Berlin to solicit 
some facilities for the new missions on the lakes. His request 
was cordially granted, and he was invited in to see the directors. 
After a little pleasant chat one of the gentlemen asked him 
whether the Moravian Church had ever carried on a mission 
before! — Missionary Review, March, 1894, p. 231. 

2 Note 55. 



MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 287 

the questions: "If so long a time has elapsed 
since the crucifixion of Christ why has not 
this good news reached us before? Why have 
so many generations of our fathers gone down 
to hell for want of it?" nor would the New 
Zealand mother have held up her last living 
child to a missionary, exclaiming, "If you 
had come before and brought me the gospel 
I should not have murdered my twelve other 
children ! " 

At the present time there are one hundred 
and twenty-eight mission stations and between 
twenty and thirty affiliated or out-stations in 
various parts of the earth. They are found 
widely distributed through all latitudes, from 
arctic and sub-arctic regions of 
Greenland, Labrador, and Alaska l * 

Forces, 
through Indian reservations in 

North America, through tropical West Indies 
and the mainland of Central and South 
America ; from the snowy heights of Tibet 
to Australia and to South and East Central 
Africa. In those fields are (wives included) 
about four hundred missionaries, fifty-nine of 
them natives. In their day-schools there are 
over twenty-two thousand pupils. Under their 
care are not far from thirty-two thousand com- 
municants — about the same, including children, 
as in their home churches. The Moravian for- 
eign field counts ninety thousand adherents, 



288 PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 

nearly three times the whole number in home 
churches. 1 

Gladly do we place a wreath on the mon- 
ument of John Huss, on the monument of 
every martyr and faithful missionary; yet will 
we never forget that in the burning fiery fur- 
nace of Bohemia there was One, and under 
scorching rays of the tropics there now is 
One, like unto the Son of God; that amidst 
the long winter of Greenland and Labrador 
near by those humble missionary dwellings 
are footsteps which leave no print on the 
snow. Before him we cast all crowns, saying, 
"Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, 
and honor, and power ! " 

Since the founding of Herrnhut Mora- 
vians have been singularly free from self- 
assertion. Talking but little they have done 
nobly. There is no proof of practicability 
like a practical illustration. The demonstra- 
tions which Columbus made with the egg 

and with his fleet settled two 
The Lesson. . , -. P mi . . 

things iorever. Ine missionary 

operations of the Unitas Fratrum during the 
eighteenth century were a rebuke and at 
length an incitement to the rest of Protes- 
tant Christendom. Though a silent factor 



1 Moravian home missions are not here included. Diaspora 
stations are found in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, 
Poland, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States. 



MORAVIAN MISSIONS. 289 

they were an important factor in starting 
the evangelistic movements which began in 
Great Britain a hundred years ago. 

We do well, indeed, to render devout thanks 
for what is now being done in behalf of peo- 
ples unevangelized or supplied only with a 
decayed Christianity. In contemplating more 
than six thousand missionaries, more than 
ten thousand stations, twelve thousand na- 
tive preachers, and more than six hundred 
thousand communicants scattered through the 
wide world we behold the mightiest of agen- 
cies engaged in a work more sublime and 
destined to an issue more triumphant than 
any other. But undue relative magnifying 
of the present is an undeserved reflection 
upon the past. Great streams are fed by 
remote rills. The seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries made contributions without which 
the wealth of the nineteenth would be want- 
ing. The Persians say "Ispahan is half the 
world ; " Oriental ignorance and Oriental ar- 
rogance are yet more unseemly in Western 
Europe and in this Western World. 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX. 293 



NOTES. 



Note 1. — Page 10. Sundry mistakes regarding this move- 
ment have been put forth: "After consultation with the other 
pastors of Geneva he [Calvin] sent two, Guillaume Chartier and 
Pierre Richier, who were afterwards joined by several others." 

— Newcomb's Cyclopedia of Missions, p. 325. " Geneva sent two 
clergymen and fourteen students to accompany the colonists." 

— Newcomb's Cyclopedia of Missions, p. 726. " The church of 
Geneva as early as 1556 inaugurated foreign missions by send- 
ing a company of fourteen missionaries to Rio de Janeiro in 
hope of being able to introduce the reformed religion into 
Brazil." — McClintoclc and Strong's Cyclopaedia, VI, p. 356. 

Note 2. — Page 17. Geddes, Michael: History of the 
Church of Ethiopia. London, 1696. La Croze, Maturin 
Veyssiere : Histoire au Christianisme D'Ethiopie et D'Armeine. 
A la Haie, 1739. P. 322. Hotten, John Camden : Abyssinia 
and its People. London, 1868. At the end a bibliography of 
more than two hundred works relating to Abyssinia. Thirsch, 
H. W. J. : Abyssinia. Translated by Sarah M. S. Pereira. 
London, 1885. Bent, J. Theodore : The Sacred City of the 
Ethiopians. London, 1893. 

Note 3. — Page 30. "The churches there being so hap- 
pily planted and watered and having divers pastors, teachers, 
and overseers set over them." — 1643, Campbell's Missionary 
Success in the Island of Formosa, I, p. 41. "In the course of 
thirty-seven years twenty-nine ordained men labored in For- 
mosa. One or more of them and also some of the Dutch 



294 APPENDIX. 

schoolmasters proved to be unworthy of the service." — 
Campbell's Missionary Success in the Island of Formosa, I, pp. 
69, 70. 

Note 4. — Page 31. It has never been easy to obtain 
access to the archives of that company, and no adequate 
history of early evangelistic operations by the Dutch in 
the East has been written. A thorough and candid investi- 
gation of original sources is much to be desired. 

Note 5. — Page 32. "Because a residence of three or 
four years only is not admissible and better not be under- 
taken at all, as he could not become familiar with the lan- 
guage in so short a time, whereas in ten or twelve years he 
could attain to a complete mastery of it." — Letter of Can- 
didius the missionary in Missionary Success in Formosa, pp. 72, 73. 

Note 6. — Page 34. "The Dutch governor told him [Cap- 
tain Gardiner] that he might as well try to teach the monkeys 
as the Papuans, and the Dutch clergy gave him very little 
encouragement." — C. M. Yonge's Pioneers and Founders. 
London, 1874. P. 272. 

Note 7. — Page 53. It was not till the first quarter of 
the present century that American notices of Eliot began to 
give his alleged birthplace. The name given varies thus: 
Nasin, Nasing, Nazing, Nazeing, in the county of Essex. 
Later his birth was credited to Little Baddow in the same 
county. Within the last twelvemonth Dr. Ellsworth Eliot, 
of New York City, has announced the discovery of the date 
of the baptism of his ancestor the apostle Eliot as recorded 
at Widford, county of Hertford. In the parish register of the 
Church of St. John Baptist at that place the record is as 
follows: "John Elliott, the Sonne of Bennett Elliott, was bap- 
tized the fyfte daye of Auguste, in the year of our Lord God 
1604." Among the marriages is that of his parents, Bennett 
Eliot and Letteye Aggar, the thirtieth of October, 1598. The 
late Archbishop Kichard Whately was baptized at the same 
font and Charles Lamb often worshiped in the same church 
— a venerable building, parts of which date probably from 
the Norman period, eight hundred years ago. Through the 



APPENDIX. 295 

efforts of Dr. Ellsworth Eliot and the Rev. John Travis Lock- 
wood, rector, a memorial window has been introduced into the 
Church of St. John. The inscription reads : " To the glory of 
God and in pious remembrance of John Eliot, A. B. Cantab, 
called 'the apostle to the Indians/ who was baptized in this 
church August 5, 1604; emigrated to New England A.D. 1639, 
and died in Koxbury, Massachusetts, May 21, 1696. This 
window was erected by his descendants A.D. 1891. 'The 
righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance/" The dedica- 
tion of the window took place on the twenty-first of May of 
the present year (1894), the American minister at the court 
of St. James, His Excellency the Hon. T. E. Bayard, being 
present. 

Note 8. — Page 53. Through the courtesy of Robert N. 
Cust, LL.D., of London, and of H. A. Morgan, master of 
Jesus College, Cambridge, I have lately received the follow- 
ing transcript from the register of that college, to which the 
copyist adds two memoranda, one of them relating to Eliot's 
Bible : 

" 1622 Maii die XV Johannes Eliott [sic] habuit licentiam 
sibi concessam petendi gratiam ab universitate ad respondendum 
quaestioni spondente M ro Beale." 

" Mr. Beale was his tutor, a fellow of the college. The 
'license' is equivalent to what we call a supplicat which the 
college gives to qucestionis proceeding to the B.A. degree (see 
Mullinger's History of University of Cambridge, Vol. 1, p. 352)." 

"John Eliot presented to the college a copy, now in our 
library, of his version of the Bible in the Indian language. 
Title : 

'The Holy Bible 

containing the 

Old Testament 

and the New 

Translated into the 

Indian Language 

&c 

Cambridge 

Printed by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson 

MDCLXIir 



296 APPENDIX. 

" On the fly-sheet in his handwriting : 

'Pro Collegio Jesu 

Accipias, mater, quod alumnus humillimus offert 

Eilius, oro preces semper habere tuas 

Johannes Eliot/ " 

Mr. Morgan remarks : " I observe that in the life given of 
him in the Encyclopaedia Britannica it is stated that he took his 
bachelor's degree in 1623, but in Leslie Stephen's Biographical 
Dictionary in 1622, and the latter date is without doubt correct. 
There was a Thomas Eliot at this college who took his degree 
in January, 1624 — which in those days counted as 1623 — and 
this I think must have led to mistakes as to when John Eliot 
took his." It should be added that the Whiting portrait of 
Eliot is not well authenticated. 

Note 9. — Page 57. Major-General Gookin, a candid, con- 
scientious acquaintance, testifies : " The truth is, Mr. Eliot en- 
gaged in this great work of preaching unto the Indians upon 
a very pure and sincere account ; for I being his neighbor and 
intimate friend at the time when he first attempted this enter- 
prise, he was pleased to communicate unto me his design and 
the motives that induced him thereto, which, as I remember, 
were principally these : Eirst, the glory of God in the conver- 
sion of some of these poor desolate souls ; secondly, his com- 
passion and ardent affection to them as of mankind in their 
great blindness and ignorance; thirdly, and not the least, to 
endeavor, so far as in him lay, the accomplishing and fulfill- 
ing the covenant and promise that New England people had 
made unto their king when he granted them their patent or 
charter, viz., that one principal end of their going to plant 
these countries was to communicate the gospel unto the native 
Indians." "It doth evidently appear that they were heroic, 
noble, and Christian principles that induced this precious serv- 
ant of Christ to enter upon this work, and not any carnal or 
by-ends ; for in these times nothing of outward encouragement 
did appear." 

Note 10. — Page 60. "During a religious interest among a 
tribe in Rhode Island, conducted in part by white men, who, of 



APPENDIX. 297 

course, used the English language while most of the Indians 
still employed their native tongue, an Indian female became 
very deeply interested for her salvation. She seemed to have 
embraced the notion since Christianity had been brought to her 
people through the English tongue that it was to be sought 
through the medium of that language. She feared God would 
not listen to her rude, pagan speech. The few converted Indians 
had acquired some knowledge of the English. She, however, 
had learned to pronounce but one word — the word 'broom/ 
Her anxiety became intense. Her Christian countrymen ex- 
horted her to pray. She felt a deep desire to pray, but knew 
not how to pray as she supposed she ought since she could not 
employ the acceptable tongue. At last the demands of her soul 
and the strivings of the divine Spirit so far overcame her that, 
throwing herself into the attitude of a suppliant, she cried 
aloud, 'Broom! Broom! Broom!' God answered her heart 
instead of her lips, and instantly filled her soul with light and 
love and the joys of his salvation. She rose up to shout his 
praise, and ever afterwards served him in a pure and joyful 
life." — Rev. Frederick Denison, in Westerly and its Witnesses. 
P. 80. 

Note 11. — Page 70. A resident about the time referred 
to says : " Boston is two miles northeast from Roxberry. His 
situation is very pleasant, hemmed in on the south side with 
the bay of Roxberry, on the north side with the Charles River, 
the marshes on the back side being not half a quarter of a mile 
over, so that a little fencing will secure their cattle from the 
wolves." "It being a neck and bare of wood, they are not 
troubled with three great annoyances, of wolves, rattlesnakes, 
and mosquitoes." — William Wood, in New England's Prospect. 
Published at London, 1634. 

Note 12. — Page 78. Such is the spelling of his name by 
the man himself in a deed dated April 3, 1692. On the grave- 
stone the inscription reads : " Here lyes the Body of Takawomb- 
pait, aged 64 years. Died September the 17th, 1716." 

.Note 13. — Page 79. General Gookin says : "We being at 
Wabquissit, at the Sagamon's wigwam, divers of the principal 



12 y» APPENDIX. 

people that were at home came to us, with whom we spent 
a good part of the night in prayer, singing psalms, and exhor- 
tations." 

Note 14. — Page 79. Eliot owed not a little to his wife, 
a very capable and excellent woman. The first marriage re- 
corded in the town records of Roxbury was that of John Eliot 
and Hannah Mumford (or Mountford, or Mountfort), 4th Sep- 
tember, 1632. But James Savage, in the Genealogical Dictionary 
of the First Settlers in New England, Vol. II, says that date can- 
not be correct, as the ship in which the bride elect came did not 
arrive till twelve days after that. 

Among the descendants of Eliot are persons of note : x 

Rev. Joseph Eliot, settled at Guilford, Conn., 1664, was the 
only son of the apostle, whose posterity now living bear the 
family name. 

Rev, Jared Eliot, D.D. and M.D., of Killing worth, Conn., 
now Clinton, a son of Joseph, was a man of mark in his day, on 
intimate terms with Eranklin, and a correspondent with learned 
men in the old world, 

Charles Wyllys Elliott (1817-1883), author of several works. 

Among descendants not bearing the name of Eliot was Hon. 
Josiah Quincy, LL.D., president of Harvard College, and others 
of that distinguished family. 

The late Samuel A. Eoote, governor of Connecticut, United 
States senator, etc. 

Mrs. Susan Huntington, wife of Rev. Joshua Huntington, of 
Boston, whose memoir was published. 

Dr. Elisha Mitchell, professor in the North Carolina Uni- 
versity, for whom Mt. Mitchell, the highest point of land east of 
the Mississippi, was named, and on whose summit his remains 
rest. 

Eitz-Greene Halleck, born in the year 1790, taking rank 
among the poets of our country. He died in 1867. 

Mrs. Ethelinda Eliot Beers (1817-1879), who wrote "The 
Picket Guard," "All Quiet Along the Potomac," and who died 
the day her collected poems were issued. Philadelphia. 



1 Genealogy of the Eliot Family. By "William N. Eliot. Revised by 
William S. Porter. New Haven, 1854. 



APPENDIX. 299 

Henry C. Bowen, Esq., proprietor of the New York Inde- 
pendent. His native place, Woodstock, Conn., was first named 
New Roxbury. Not far from his present country seat in that 
town is the rock, on Plain Hill, from which Eliot preached to 
Indians of a September morning in 1674. His text was, " Seek 
ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these 
things shall be added unto you." Erom the years 1843-1858 
there were, at different times, seven members of the Eliot 
Church, Roxbury, Mass., who were descendants of John Eliot. 

Note 15. — Page 87. The Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, D.D., 
pastor of the West Church in Boston (1747-1766), a son of Ex- 
perience Mayhew, had one daughter, Elizabeth, who married 
Peter Wainwright, an Englishman. Their son, Jonathan May- 
hew Wainwright, became bishop of the diocese of New York, 
1852. 

Note 16. — Page 88. Experience Mayhew, writing in Octo- 
ber, 1651: "There are one hundred ninetie-nine men, women, 
and children that have professed themselves to be worshippers 
of the great and everliving God. There are now two meetings 
kept every Lord's Day, the one three miles, the other about 
eight miles off my house : Hiacomes teacheth twice a day at 
the nearest, and Mumanequem accordingly at the farthest ; the 
last day of the week they come unto me to be informed touch- 
ing the subject they are to handle." 

Note 17. — Page 89. Hubbard says, " But the greatest 
appearance of any saving work and serious profession of 
Christianity amongst any of them was at Martin's [Martha's] 
Vineyard, which, beginning in the year 1645, hath gradually 
proceeded till this present time, wherein all the island is in a 
manner leavened with the profession of our religion, and hath 
taken up the practice of our manners in civil behaviour and 
our manner of cultivating the earth." 

Note 18. — Page 91. Experience Mayhew in the preface 
to his work, Indian Converts, says, " Though I could have men- 
tioned many of our Indians who have discovered very probable 
signs of true repentance in the time of their last and long sick- 
nesses, many of them dying of chronical diseases; yet, consider- 



300 APPENDIX. 

ing the doubtfulness of a deathbed repentance, I have not put 
any into my catalogue of penitents in whom a remarkable 
change did not appear while they were well and in health." 

Note 19. — Page 98. The statement of Dr. Sereno E. 
Dwight in his edition of Edwards' works (Vol. I, p. 449) is in- 
correct, so far as concerns Sergeant's use of the language in 
preaching : " Mr. Sergeant devoted much of his time to the 
study of their language (the Mohukaunew), yet at the close of 
his life he had not made such progress that he could preach 
in it, or even pray in it, except by a form." 

Note 20. — Page 118. Professor Tholuck writes : "It may 
be said that even among us more awakenings have proceeded 
from the written lives of those eminent for piety than from 
books of devotion and printed sermons. "We are able, at least 
in the circle of our own knowledge, to address a great number 
of Christians — and among them names of the first rank in the 
religious world — who are indebted essentially to works of biog- 
raphy for the confirmation and stability of their spiritual life. 
The writer can assert this in regard to himself. He can make 
such an acknowledgment respecting a book to which he knows 
that not a few in Europe, America, and Asia will bear a similar 
testimony. The biography of the missionary Martyn — the man 
who even among the Persian Mohammedans was known only as 
the holy — opened also in my own life a new era of religious 
progress." — Sonntags Bibliothelc. 

Note 21. — Page 122. " My soul was full of tenderness and 
love, even to the most inveterate of my enemies." " I longed 
that those who, I have reason to think, owe me ill will might 
be eternally happy. It seemed refreshing to think of meeting 
them in heaven, how much soever they had injured me on 
earth; had no disposition to insist upon any confession from 
them in order to reconciliation and the exercise of love and 
kindness to them." 

Note 22. — Page 124. " God sanctified and made meet 
for his own use that vessel, which he made of large capacity, 
having endowed him with very uncommon abilities and gifts 
of nature. He was a singular instance of ready invention,. 



APPENDIX. 301 

natural energy, ready flowing expression and sprightly appre- 
hension, quick discerning, and a very strong memory, yet of a 
very penetrating genius, clear thought, and piercing judgment." 
— Edwards' Sermon at Brainerd's Funeral. 

Note 23. — Page 128. Kaunaumeek was sixteen miles east 
from Albany and about five miles northwest from New Leba- 
non. Brainerd's Bridge, its present name, is a small village in 
Rensselaer County, N. Y., which received that name not from 
David Brainerd, but from Jeremiah Brainerd, a relative of his 
who settled there and built a bridge across Kinderhook Creek. 

Note 24. — Page 138. " One man considerably in years, who 
had been a remarkable drunkard, a conjurer, and a murderer, 
and was awakened some months before, was now brought to 
great extremity under his spiritual distress, so that he trembled 
for hours together, and apprehended himself just dropping into 
hell without any power to rescue or relieve himself." " I stood 
amazed at the influence which seized the audience almost uni- 
versally." "Towards night the Indians met together of their 
own accord, and sung, and prayed, and discoursed of divine 
things among themselves, at which time there was much affec- 
tion among them." Was there an eagerness to learn divine 
truths? "They are so unwearied in religious exercises, and 
insatiable in their thirsting after Christian knowledge, that I 
can sometimes scarcely avoid laboring so as greatly to exhaust 
my strength and spirits." 

How about Sunday and social worship 1 " The Lord's 
Day was seriously and religiously observed, and care taken 
by parents to keep their children orderly upon that sacred 
day ; and this, not because I had driven them to the perform- 
ance of these duties by frequently inculcating them, but be- 
cause they had felt the power of God's Word upon their 
hearts, were made sensible of their sin and misery, and 
hence could not but pray and comply with everything which 
they knew to be their duty from what they felt within 
themselves." 

Note 25. — Page 142. "I this day met with them and 
the Indians of this place. Numbers of the latter probably 



302 APPENDIX. 

could not have been prevailed upon to attend this meeting 
had it not been for these religious Indians, who accompanied 
me hither and preached to them. Some of those who had in 
times past been extremely averse to Christianity now behaved 
soberly, and some others laughed and mocked" (February 17). 
" My people of Crossweeksung continued with them day and 
night, repeating and inculcating the truths I had taught them, 
and sometimes prayed and sung psalms among them." 

Note 26. — Page 144. He speaks often of "wrestling" with 
the Lord; of intercession, fervent intercession, as a delight. 
"Just at night the Lord visited me marvelously in prayer. 
I think my soul never was in such an agony before. I felt 
no restraint, for the treasures of divine grace were opened 
to me. I wrestled for the absent friends, for the ingathering 
of souls, for multitudes of poor souls, and for many that I 
thought were the children of God, personally, in many dis- 
tant places. I was in such an agony from sun half an hour 
high till near dark that I was all over wet with sweat." " 
that the kingdom of the dear Saviour might come with power, 
and the healing waters of the sanctuary spread far and wide 
for the healing of the nations ! " 

Note 27. — Page 147. In the cemetery at Northampton the 
grave of Brainerd is not far from the entrance. On it rests 
a slab of red sandstone, and on this rests another similar 
slab two feet higher, supported by fluted pillars, now weather- 
beaten. In the upper center is a marble slab, inserted in a 
socket, on which appears this inscription: 

"Sacred to the 

memory of the 

Rev. David Brainerd, 

a faithful and laborious 

missionary to the 
Stockbridge, Delaware, 

and Susquehannah 

Tribes of Indians. 

Who died in this town 

Oct. 10, 1747. 

JEt. 32." 



APPENDIX. 303 

The corners of the main upper slab have been chipped 
off, probably by pilfering relic hunters. A former marble 
tablet, bearing the same inscription as the one now seen, had 
been chipped and ruined in the same way. Yet even that 
was not the original one. Mr. Seth Pomeroy, some years 
since, stated at a public meeting that the cavity was first 
filled by a leaden tablet, which had been removed during the 
War of the Revolution and run into bullets for use at the 
blockade of Boston. The age given, " thirty-two years," is an 
evident mistake. Brainerd, having been born April 20, 1718, 
and having died October 9, 1747, lived only twenty-nine years 
and nearly six months. 1 

Note 29. — Page 152. Studiosi Danici non idonei sunt ad 
hoc opus : illi dediti sunt luxuriae, crapulse, ignavae, scortation- 
ibus. See Germann : Ziegenbalg und Pliitschau, p. 47. Well 
for the heathen that such men did not offer their services. 

Note 30. — Page 162. "Indeed," writes Ziegenbalg, "in 
the three years I have been in India I have scarcely read a 
German or a Latin book, but have given up all my time to 
reading Malabar books ; have talked diligently with the hea- 
then, and executed all my business in their tongue, so that 
now (1709) it is as easy to me as my mother tongue, and in 
the last two years I have been enabled to write several 
books in Tamil." 

Note 31. — Page 163. Tracy's History of the American 
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, p. 114, where a 
mistaken statement is added, that it was also the first from 
the neighborhood of Calcutta on the east to the shores of 
the Mediterranean on the west. 

Note 32. — Page 167. Later (1714) the society had occa- 
sion to write to Tranquebar, making the timely suggestion, 
"We do not doubt that your work has been made much 
easier to you by the printing press which you are now ar- 



1 Styles gives the date of Brainerd's death as Friday, October 6, 
instead of Tuesday, October 9, 1747. 



304 APPENDIX. 

ranging, but take care that you are not inconsiderately led 
into so much translation and printing that you do not find 
sufficient time for constant intercourse with the heathen/' 
Under the skillful superintendence of Mr. P. R. Hunt, for- 
merly of the American Board (1840-1866) at Madras, the 
missionary press in that city stood at the head of its class 
in India. Tamil and Telugu typography was much improved. 

Note 33. — Page 170. Besides his translations of Scrip- 
ture the following works were published: 1. Allgemeine Schule 
der wahren Weisheit. Frankfurt und Leipzig, 1710. 2. Aus- 
fuhr. Bericht wie er das Amt des Evangelii unter den Heiden 
und Christen ftihre. 4 Aus., Hallae, 1735. 3. Grammatica 
Damulica. Hallae, 1716. 4. Brevis Delineatio Missionis operis. 
Tranquebar, 1717. 5. Numerous extended reports of mis- 
sionary labor. Remaining in manuscript : 1. Der Gottgefallige 
Christenstand. 2. Der Gottgefallige Lehrstand. 3. Bibliotheca 
Malabarica. 4. Beschreibung des Malabarischen Heidenthums. 
5. Genealogie der Malabarischen Gotter. 6. Drei Moralienbuch- 
lein. 7. Mehere Heine ascetische Schriften in einem Fascikel. 

Note 34. — Page 173. In a sermon entitled "The Joyful 
Sound Reaching to Both the Indies " the author says, " While 
our supplications to our Father are thus engaged we shall 
remember our dear brethren of the Danish mission so far as 
Malabar, the good news of whose amiable enterprises have 
been as cool waters to our thirsty souls." — India Christiana, 
a discourse to the Commissioners for the Propagation of the Gos- 
pel among American Indians, by Cotton Mather, D.D. Boston, 
1721. 

Note 35. — Page 183. After his intercourse with the 
people and princes of Tanjore had begun — the latter being 
descendants of the Mahratta conquerors — "I learned/' he 
states, "at the request of the king, the Mahratta language, 
into which I translated a dialogue between a Christian and a 
heathen, composed by me in the Malabar tongue" — that is 
the Tamil, for thus did the early missionaries mistakenly des- 
ignate that language. This was the beginning and the end 
of Schwartz's labor in the line of authorship. Miss Yonge 



APPENDIX. 305 

remarks justly {Pioneers and Founders, p. 54) : " Schwartz's 
facility in learning languages must have been great, for the 
English of his letter is excellent, unless his biographer, Dean 
Pearson, has altered it. It is not at all like that of a 
German." 

Note 36. — Page 184. A specimen of Schwartz's method. 
He is addressing an assembly of Mohammedans at Trichin- 
opoly (1770). Two of them have been extolling the merits of 
good works. Our missionary observes that the real founda- 
tion for the remission of sins is Christ's merit and satisfaction. 
" We are sinners and deserve the wrath of God. Consider his 
pure and holy nature. The more we think of God and our- 
selves the more we must be convinced that either we must 
suffer ourselves the punishment due to our sins, or that an- 
other person duly qualified must endure in our stead. This 
person is no other than Jesus Christ. God has made him to 
be sin for us, who knew no sin; accepting, out of infinite 
compassion, his atonement, which he has sufficiently demon- 
strated by his resurrection. He is now the foundation of all 
grace, so that unless you seek through him the forgiveness of 
your sins the guilt will rest upon yourselves, and you must 
bear the punishment." As he approached threescore years 
and ten, writing to an English lady Schwartz said: "Many 
of your clergymen make little of a redeemer. Dr. Price's 
[Richard Price, the Arian] book of sermons was sent me. I 
opened them ; was shocked at his doctrine ; cut the book in 
pieces and burned it. They destroy the foundation of true 
happiness and true holiness. What can they build ? " 

Note 37. — Page 191. "Ich stehe an den Pforten der 
Ewigkeit," he once wrote to a friend. Of the period from 
1780 to 1783 he writes, " Often more than eight hundred of 
the poor and hungry were standing before our door." 

Note 38. — Page 200. Hiittemann, thirty-one years; Cnoll, 
thirty-five years ; Breithaupt, thirty-six years ; Gericke, thirty- 
six years ; Zeglin, forty years ; Pohle, fort3'-one years ; John, 
forty-three years ; Klein, forty-four years ; Cammerer, forty-six 
years; Schwartz, forty -eight years; Fabricius, fifty years; 



306 APPENDIX. 

Kohlhoff (father), fifty-three years; Kohlhoff (son, born in In- 
dia), fifty-seven years; Rottler, fifty-eight years; Kiernander, 
fifty-nine years. In his History of Missions, Vol. I, p. 176, 
Dr. Brown says, " Schultze, after having been twenty-four 
years in India, returned to Halle, and it appears he lived till 
1799, when he must probably have been upwards of one hun- 
dred years old, as he came to India in 1719." Schultze, how- 
ever, died in 1760, aged 71. 

Note 39. — Page 201. Another monument, at the expense 
of the East India Company and executed by the sculptor 
Bacon, was placed in the Eort Church at Madras. At the 
same time, however, the company would gladly have ex- 
cluded Carey from the neighborhood of Calcutta ; but hap- 
pily they had no control over the little Danish territory of 
Serampore. 

Note 40. — Page 205. The financial affairs of the mission 
were not always well administered. Such definite arrange- 
ments for the treasurership, for accounts and responsibility in 
disbursements, as should be maintained by every mission did 
not exist. Hence there sometimes arose jealousies, suspicions, 
and accusations. Indiscreet expenditures were made, and in 
general there appears to have been a looseness which, to- 
gether with the conflict of individual opinions upon certain 
matters, could not result otherwise than in alienations. These 
divisions became deplorable at times, and were a scandal 
among lookers-on, most of whom had no good will toward 
evangelistic work. 

Note 41. — Page 205. The pecuniary aid afforded by the 
Christian Knowledge Society and the personal reenforcement 
for a short time of Messrs. Schnarre and Rhenius, together 
with a remittance of eighteen hundred pounds sterling in one 
year (1816) from the king of Denmark, failed to bring recu- 
peration. A few years later that part of the field containing 
eleven small church buildings, with the property pertaining 
thereto, eleven catechists, and thirteen hundred Christians, 
which lay within the province of Tanjore and was subject to 
England, Cammerer made over to the society above named. 



APPENDIX. 307 

Note 42. — Page 206. Dr. Buchanan remarks (1806), 
"Kohlhoff stated that there were upwards of ten thousand 
Protestant Christians belonging to the Tanjore and Tinnevelly 
districts alone who had not among them one complete volume 
of the Bible, and that not one Christian, perhaps, in a hun- 
dred had a New Testament; and yet there are some copies 
of the Tamil Scriptures to be sold at Tranquebar, but the 
poor natives cannot afford to purchase them." 

Note 43. — Page 209. Sherring's Protestant Missions, p. 158. 
Mr. Sherring's later estimate is five sixths of the converts in 
the various missions. See Proceedings of the London Confer- 
ence, p. 118. 

Note 44. — Page 209. It might be supposed that Serfoge, 
the native prince who manifested such tearful respect for his 
guardian, Schwartz, would embrace the religion of his bene- 
factor and follow in the steps of that good man. But a 
missionary of the American Board wrote, in 1828, regarding 
him : " The rajah has become very unfriendly to missionaries. 
He has yielded himself up to dissipation, and given immense 
sums to the Brahmins and to the temples to make himself a 
Brahmin." — Rev. Mr. Winslow, Missionary Herald, Vol. XXV, 
p. 145. 

Note 45. — Page 222. Hough, III, 332. ''The deists, to- 
gether with many careless professors of Christianity among 
the Danes, treated the missionaries and their instructions with 
contempt — conduct which they seldom experienced from the 
heathen, who, though unwilling to embrace the gospel, very 
rarely thought of reviling its doctrines or precepts. Under 
the Danish government the public servants had never been 
allowed to molest the Christians; but unhappily the British 
authorities at Madras had thought proper to patronize the 
idolatries of the country in a way that was all but tanta- 
mount to identifying themselves with the worst abominations 
of Hindu superstition. The native officers at Tranquebar, 
presuming upon this concession on the part of their new mas- 
ters, compelled the poor Christians to assist at the heathen 
festivals and to attend their public ceremonies." — Hough, III, 
347-349. "There were, in truth, no outward motives to pre- 



308 APPENDIX. 

serve morality of conduct or even decency of demeanor; so, 
from the moment of their landing upon the shores of India, 
the first settlers cast off all those bonds which had restrained 
them in their native villages. They regarded themselves as 
privileged beings — privileged to violate all the obligations of 
religion and morality and to outrage all the decencies of life. 
They who went thither were often desperate adventurers, 
whom England, in the emphatic language of the Scripture, 
had spewed out — men who sought those golden sands of the 
East to repair their broken fortunes, to bury in oblivion a 
sullied name, or to wring with lawless hand from the weak 
and unsuspecting wealth which they had not the character 
or the capacity to obtain by honest industry at home. They 
cheated; they gambled; they drank; they reveled in all kinds 
of debauchery. Associates in vice, linked together by a com- 
mon bond of rapacity, they still often pursued one another 
with desperate malice, and, few though they were in num- 
bers, among them there was no fellowship, except a fellow- 
ship of crime." — John William Kaye, in Christianity in India. 
London, 1859. Pp. 45, 46. 

Note 46. — Page 223. Geisler became an unbeliever and 
opposer. Bovingh sided with enemies of the mission. Three 
— Bosse, Hutter, and Eriichtenicht — became intemperate. 
The first married a wife of the same habits, and was dis- 
charged; the last named became a brazen-faced drunkard and 
quarrelsome bully, insulting and threatening his colleagues, 
and even appearing at church on Christmas in a state of 
intoxication. Huttemann could write (1779): "Der Kirche 
Jesu ist an solchen Proselyten wie Malabaren, Nicobaren 
Gronlandern, Eskimos wenig gelegen. Alle diese Nationen 
sind eine Art Affengeschlecht, die miissen erst zu Menchen 
werden, ehe das Christenthum ihren mit Nutzen gepredigt 
wird." — Germann's Leben Schwartz, S. 289. 

Note 47. — Page 225. The list might be extended by 
inserting the names which here follow and many more : Sir 
Charles Aitchison, Sir Charles Barnard, Sir Thomas Candy, 
Sir Henry Durand, Sir Vincent Eyre, Sir Robert Montgomery, 
Sir Richmond Shakespear, Sir Rivers Thompson. 



APPENDIX. 309 

Note 48. — Page 225. Mr. Sherring (Protestant Missions 
in India, p. 28) and others are mistaken in placing Calcutta 
on the list of the Danish missions. Kiernander, a Swede by 
birth, was, even at Cuddalore, and not less at Calcutta (175S), 
entirely under the direction of the English Christian Knowl- 
edge Society, and for a time was supported by the same. 
After marrying a rich widow he no longer required aid from 
that source, but lived in a showy and luxurious style till 
pecuniary reverses necessitated a change. 

Note 49. — Page 228. In 1708 a public disputation, " De 
Tseudo-Apostolis," was held at Wittenberg, under the presi- 
dency of Dr. Neumann, in which it was more than intimated 
that Ziegenbalg and Plutschau were false apostles and would 
do mischief in Tranquebar. 

Note 50. — Page 235. Such timber as is found comes 
for the most part from Siberia, carried down by a. current 
between Spitzbergen and the east coast of Greenland to Cape 
Earewell, thence it drifts upward along the west coast, and 
by winds and currents is carried ashore even as far north as 
Holsteinberg. — Graak's Expedition, p. 24. 

Note 51. — Page 238. Bishop Krog appears to have been 
as little acquainted with the true missionary spirit as with 
geography. He persistently opposed Thomas von Westen, who 
showed such laudable zeal in behalf of the Finns. See Vorm- 
baum's von Westen. Nor was he wholly peculiar in his geo- 
graphical conceptions. Archbishop Lorenzana, quoted in Pres- 
cott's Mexico, I, p. 4 (note), says, " It is doubtful if the country 
of New Spain does not border on Tartary and Greenland — by 
way of California on the former, and by New Mexico on the 
latter." 

Note 52. — Page 250. Eeenforcements were sent out — 
in 1723 Albert Top, whose health broke down, and who after 
four years was obliged to return home ; in 1728 two col- 
leagues, Olaus Lange and Henry Milzorg; in 1731 a Mr. Olm- 
sorg. But Paul Egede, the eldest son of the missionary, ren- 
dered far more efficient service than any other one. Indeed, 
from twelve years of age onward he was his father's assist- 



310 APPENDIX. 

ant. He studied four years at Copenhagen, and returned 
(1735) as missionary of a colony planted at Disco. After- 
wards he presided over the station at Christian's Hope till 
1740, when he removed to Copenhagen, there becoming a 
member of the College of Missions, director of the Hospital 
for Orphans, and at length Bishop of Greenland. He con- 
tinued indefatigable in his efforts to promote the welfare of 
the enterprise; published a Greenland grammar in Danish 
and Latin; a dictionary in the same manner; a translation 
into Eskimo of the New Testament and portions of the Old, 
as well as Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ and several 
Danish prayers and liturgies. He also prepared a work en- 
titled Information on Greenland, which is one of the treasures 
of Danish literature. He died in Denmark, 1789, at the age 
of eighty-one. 

Note 53. — Page 282. In earlier days very few except 
uneducated laborers were sent out. Afterwards there was 
occasionally a scholarly man, and in recent years there has 
been an increasing number of well-educated men. At Niesky, 
in Silesia, there is now a training institution, established in 
1869. A glance at the literary labors of missionaries in 
Greenland, Labrador, among the Indians of North, Central, 
and South America, South Africa, and Thibet shows that they 
have made very important contributions to various vernacu- 
lars. See The Literary Works of the Foreign Missionaries of the 
Moravian Church, by the Rev. G. Reichel, of Herrnhut, Saxony, 
translated and annotated by Bishop Edmund De Schweinitz. 

Note 54. — Page 283. In the course of the first fifty 
years one hundred and sixty missionaries died in the West 
Indies. During the first year of labor in Surinam thirty-nine 
missionaries and twenty-one wives of missionaries died. 

Note 55. — Page 286. A savage Indian entered the hut 
of the faithful Moravian, Mack, near what is now Newtown, 
Fairfield County, Connecticut, and said to unfaithful English 
colonists there, " You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, to 
have been so long among us and never to have told us any- 
thing of what we hear from this man." 



INDEX. 



Abyssinia, 16, 17, 263, 293. 
Acquiring vernaculars, 303-304. 
Adaptation of Christianity, 275. 
Adolphus, Gustavus, 13, 14. 
Alleine, Joseph, 43. 
Alva, Duke, 23, 24. 
Amboyna, 28. 
Anglo-Saxons, 149. 
Arctic regions, 233-236, 255. 
Augustine, 126. 

Bach, 87. 

Ball's River, 244. 

Batavia, 30, 37. 

Bancroft, Bishop, 47. 

Banyan tree, 158. 

Barber, Jonathan, 111. 

Baxter, R., 79, 80. 

Bede, 65. 

Beers, Mrs. E. Eliot, 298. 

Bergen, 241,242,247. 

Beveridge, Bishop, 125. 

Bible Society, British and Foreign, 

14. 
Bible translations, 170. 
Boles, John, 11. 
Bogatsky, 179. 
Boston, 70, 297. 
BSnisch, Frederick, 87. 
Bourne, Joseph, 93. 
Bdvingh, 166. 

Bowen, Henry C, 110, 299. 
Boyle, Robert, 45, 52, 126. 
Brainerd, David, 283, 300-303. 
Branford, 110. 
Brant, 114. 
Brazil, 9, 12. 
Brotherton, 114. 
Bunyan, 122. 
Burr, President, 122, 127. 

Calvin, John, 10. 
Campanius, 15. 
Candid ius, George, 30. 
Carne, 62. 
Carnatic, 188. 
Caste. 193-195, 211-213. 
Celebes, 36. 



Celibacy, 195-196. 

Chalmers, Dr., 118. 

Chapel built, 163. 

Charles V, 10, 23. 

Charles XII, 241. 

Charters, 50. 

Christian VI, 248. 

Christian laymen, 224-225, 308. 

Christian loyalty, 273-275. 

Christians, nominal, 164. 

Civilization, 251. 

Clap, President, 122. 

Climate of New England, 60. 

Clive, 174, 181. 

Coincidences, 279. 

Coligny, 9. 

Colonial evangelism, 49. 

Colonial labors, 264-265. 

Columbus, 50, 243. 

Conference of 1888, 4. 

Constance, 201-262. 

Conversion of Europeans, 229-232. 

Conversion of Indians, 68. 

Converts, Indian, 138-143. 

Copenhagen, 154. 156. 

Cotton, John, 91, 95. 

Cotton, Josiah, 94. 

Cotton, Rowland, 93. 

Cowper, 126. 

Coxinga, 30. 

Cromwell, 41, 44. 

Crossweeksung, 132. 

Cutshamakin, 61. 

Danes in India, 151, 159-161, 167. 
Danforth, Samuel, 96. 
Dankaerts, 28. 
Dartmouth College, 113. 
Dartmouth, Earl, 112. 
Davenport, James, 126. 
Delaware Indians, 129, 131, 133. 
Denmark, 148-152, 160, 204, 226-227, 

259. 
Dickinson, Jonathan, 127. 
Discipline, 262. 
Diversities, 219-220. 
Dober, Leonard, 278. 
Dutch, 11, 264-265. 

(311) 



312 



INDEX. 



Dutch East India Company, 264. 
Dutch, societies, 35. 

East Indies, 26, 35. 

Eastham, 94. 

Eckhart, 123. 

Edgartown, 83, 85. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 101-103, 122, 

124-125, 147. 
Edwards, Jonathan, Jr., 103. 
Egede, Gertrude, 239, 246-249. 
Egede, Hans, 236-260, 266. 
Egede, Paul, 309-310. 
Eliot, C. W., 298. 
Eliot, John, 15, 52-81, 110, 155, 263, 

294-298. 
Eliot, Jared, 298. 
Eliot, Joseph, 298. 
Elizabeth Islands, 83. 
England, 169, 180-181, 228-229. 
English intolerance, 42. 
English Reformation, 40. 
Erasmus, 6. 
Eschatology, 8. 
Eskimos, 244, 263. 

Famine, 219. 

Fidelity, 284. 

Finland, 13. 

Finley, Rev. Samuel, 121. 

Fitch, James, 111. 

Formosa, 30, 37, 293. 

Fox, George, 126. 

Francke, A. H., 154, 160, 177. 

Frederick IV, 150-151, 155, 164, 242. 

Frederick the Great, 175, 177. 

Frederick William I, 268. 

Frobisher, 43. 

Gayhead, 84, 92. 
Geekie, Dr., 78, 80, 256. 
Gellert, 126, 175. 
George I, 228. 
Gleim, 176. 
Gobat, Bishop, 17. 
Gookin, Daniel, 96, 110. 
Gookin, General, 95, 296-297. 
Government neutrality, 38. 
Greenland, 235, 260. 
Grotius, 29, 45. 
Griindler, 165. 
Guiana, 31. 

Hall, Gordon, 131, 174. 
Halle, 152-153. 
Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 298. 
Hawley, Gideon, 93, 103. 
Heber, 188. 
Heligoland, 156. 
Henry VIII, 41. 
Herrnhut, 262, 266, 270, 277. 
Heroism, 254. 



Heurnius, J., 27. 
Heyling, Peter, 15-17. 
Hiacomes, 85, 89, 299. 
Hilarion, 117. 
Hiller, 179. 
Holden, Samuel, 99. 
Hold-with-Hope, 248. 
Holland, 22, 26, 264-265. 
Hollis, Isaac, 99. 
Hooker, Thomas, 53, 106. 
Hoole, Rev. Mr., 195. 
Hopkins, Mark, 100. 
Hopkins, Samuel, 120. 
Hornhonius, 31. 
Horton, Azariah, 127, 131. 
Huntington, Mrs. Susan, 298. 
Huss, John, 261, 288. 
Hyde, Thomas, 44, 45. 
Hyder, Ali, 188, 190, 217. 

India, 30, 157-159, 171. 
Indians, 52. 

Indian churches, 69-71. 
Indian converts, 87-91, 299. 
Indian decadence, 78. 
Indian industry, 62. 
Indian language, 55. 
Indian outrages, 75-76. 
Indians wronged, 74-75. 
Individual movements, 42. 
Innuit, 245. 
Isenberg, 17. 

James 1, 41, 46. 
Java, 26, 36. 
Jerome, 65, 117. 
John, C.F., 212. 
Jordan, Polycarp, 166. 
Judson, A. H., 174. 
Junius, R., 30. 

Kaunaumeek, 128. 

Kiernander, 309. 

Klopstock, 175. 

Kohlhoff. 193. 

Krapf , 17. 

Krog, Bishop, 238-239, 309. 

Lake, Dr., 44. 
Lapland, 13, 14. 
Laud, Archbishop, 47. 
Lessing, 175. 
Linner, Martin, 280. 
Literature, Christian, 225-226. 
Longevity of missionaries, 305. 
Lorenzana, Archbishop, 309. 
Lovalty to Christ, 271-273. 
Liitkins, Dr., 152, 227. 
Luther, 7, 9, 65, 183. 

Macaulay, Lobd, 207. 
Malcolm, Howard, 207. 



INDEX. 



313 



Manomet, 95. 
Marsden, 118. 
Marshall, 172. 
Marshpee, 93. 

Martha's Vineyard, 83, 84, 88, 299. 
Martyn, Henry, 118. 
Massachusetts Colony, 51. 
Mather, Cotton, 172, 304. 
Mather, Increase. 81. 
Maurice, John, 31, 32. 
Maximilian, 6. 
Mayhew, Experience, 86, 88. 
Mayhew, John, 86, 174. 
Mayhew, Jonathan, 299. 
Mayhew, Thomas, 83-84, 88. 
Mayhew, Thomas, Jr., 83-84, 85. 
Mayhew, Zechariah, 87-88. 
Mercenary motives, 33-35. 
Michaelis, 176. 
Mills, S. J., 174. 
Mission decline, 204-207. 
Mission press, 303. 
Mission schools, 214. 
Mission stations, new, 225. 
Missionary college, 28. 
Missionary mistakes, 4. 
Missionary mortality, 310. 
Mitchell, Elisha, 298. 
Mohammedanism, 38. 
Mohegans, 111, 114. 
Moor, Joshua, 113. 
Moravians, 111, 264, 270-281. 
Moravian literature, 310. 
Motive power, 271-273. 
Mumford, Hannah, 298. 

Nantucket, 83, 92. 

Narragansets, 106. 

Natick, 61, 70, 71. 

New England churches, 265. 

New Stockbridge, 104-105. 

New Sweden, 15. 

Niantics, 108-109. 

Niles, Samuel, 109. 

Ninigret, 109. 

Nipmuck country, 110. 

Nitschmann, David, 280. 

Nominal Christians, 221-224, 307- 

308. 
Nonantum, 59, 61. 
Northmen, 149. 
Norway, 237. 
Norwich, 111. 

Occom, Samson, 104, 112-115. 
Olaf, 13. 
Ormuz, 3. 

Oxenbridge, John, 43. 
Oxenstiern, 15. 

Park, Joseph, 108. 
Parliament petitioned, 44. 



Parsons, Levi. 118. 

Pastorate, native, 213-214. 

Paul, Moses, 115. 

Persecution, 218. 

Philip of Narraganset, 61, 74. 

Philip II, 10, 23. 

Pierson, Abraham, 110. 

Pietism, 268-269. 

Pilgrims and Puritans, 52, 262. 

Pliitschau, 152, 154, 160, 168. 

Plymouth, 95. 

Pocock, Edward, 45. 

Portuguese, 26, 161. 

Prayer, 297. 

" Praying Indians," 70, 74. 

Preaching Christ, 184. 

Prideaux, Dean, 45. 

Prison, 165. 

Propaganda, 29. 

Pulicat, 31. 

Pulsnitz, 153. 

Quinoy, JOSIAH, 298. 

Randulf, Bishop, 238. 
Rationalism, 268. 
Rauch, Christian Henry, 111. 
Rawson, Grindall, 96. 
Reflex results, 226. 
Reformation period, 5. 
Relations vague, 203. 
Reproach for neglect, 310. 
Rhenish Missionary Society, 37. 
Rhode Island, 106. 
Roman Catholics, 218. 
Roxbury, 56. 
Rutherford, 125. 
Ryland, Dr., 117. 

Sandwich, 94. 

Saying, not doing, 282. 

Scatticokes, 112. 

Schultze, 176, 181-182. 

Schwartz, C. F., 176-204, 304. 

Secular motives, 208-210. 

Semler, 176. 

Separatists, 125. 

Serfogee, 192, 307. 

Sergeant, John, 97-100, 128, 300. 

Sergeant, John, Jr., 104. 

Seringham, 187. 

Service, brief, 32. 

Sewall, Samuel, 105. 

Side pursuits, 215-216. 

Sifting period, 291. 

Simons, James, 109. 

Skroellings, 244. 

Small causes, 275-288. 

Smallpox, 249. 

Societies in United States, 48. 

Spiritual results, 250, 252. 

State relations, 220-221. 



314 



INDEX. 



St. Chrischona, 17. 
Stockbridge, 97-101. 
Stolberg. Countess, 281. 
Strong, Job, 140. 
Superficiality, 33, 208-210. 
Surinam, 20. 
Sweden, 12. 
Sweden borg, 186. 

Tackawompbait, 78, 109. 
Tamil, 170. 
Tanjore, 167, 186, 190. 
Tawanquatuck, 89, 90. 
Tenison, Archbishop, 46. 
Tennent, William, 140. 
Ten tribes, 57. 
Tersteegen, 179. 
Thatcher, Peter, 96. 
Tholuck, Professor, 118, 300. 
Thompson, William, 109. 
Tinnevelly, 185. 
Tisbury, 86, 91. 
Torrey, Josiah, 91. 
Tranquebar, 156, 159, 204, 205. 
Treat, Samuel, 94. 
Trichinopoly, 186-187, 196, 203. 
Tuljajee, 191. 
Tupper, Thomas, 94. 
Tyerman and Bennet, 206. 

Ulfilas, 192. 

"Unworthy missionaries, 308. 
Ursinus, 19. 
Usefulness, 258. 



Vaagen, 236. 
Vanderkemp, 35. 
Vans Kenneday, 223. 
Vernaculars, 33. 
Villegagnon, 10-12. 
Voltaire, 270. 
Von der Linde, 154. 
Von Welz, 17-19. 

Waban, 61. 
Wake, Archdeacon, 228. 
Walaeus, 28. 
Waldo, Peter, 65. 
Wales, Prince of, 99. 
Wampanoags, 106. 
Warneck, 9, 77. 
Watts, Isaac, 98. 
Wesleyanism, 271. 
West, Stephen, 104. 
Westerly, 108. 
Wheelock, Eleazer, 112-114. 
William the Silent, 25. 
Williams, Roger, 106-108. 
Wiswall, Samuel, 92. 
Woodbridge, Timothy, 99. 

Yonge, C. M., 70. 

Zeisbebgee, 88. 

Ziegenbalg, 152, 160, 162, 164-174, 

188, 228, 309. 
Zinzendorf, 20, 267-269, 281. 



3/ 



